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Alert

Journalist murdered in Oaxaca, police not investigating possible connection to his work; governor's supporters lift siege of newspaper

(RSF/IFEX) - RSF is horrified by the murder in Oaxaca State in southern Mexico of Raúl Marcial Pérez, editorial columnist for the regional daily "El Gráfico"; his death brings to nine the number of journalists killed in Mexico since the start of 2006.

RSF said it was surprised at the manner in which the police investigation is being conducted; from the start, police had ruled out a link to the murdered journalist's work as the motive.

"The murder of Raúl Marcial Pérez closes a particularly grim year for the Mexican press, with three journalists missing and nine killed, two of them in Oaxaca State, where the media is paying a high price for a crackdown against social unrest there in the past two years," RSF added.

"We are appalled that the investigation into this murder is discounting [work-related motives], even though colleagues at the daily he worked for, 'El Gráfico', stressed that he had exposed human rights abuses committed recently by supporters of the governor, Ulíses Ruiz Ortiz," RSF said.

"Might they be trying to cover this one up, as happened previously in the investigation into the murder of Indymedia cameraman Brad Will, on 27 October? We have good reasons to believe so," RSF added (for further information on the Will case, see IFEX alerts of 7 December, 3 November and 30 October 2006).

Armed men burst into the offices of "El Gráfico" in Juxtlahuaca, an indigenous area in Oaxaca State, on 8 December, and opened fire on Marcial Pérez, who was killed instantly. A lawyer, María de Jesús, who was talking with the journalist at the time, was wounded but her injuries are not life-threatening. Twenty-eight 9 mm and .22 calibre cartridges were later recovered at the scene.

Marcial Pérez had worked for the daily for 10 years and wrote a tri-weekly column, "El otro lado de la moneda" ("The other side of the coin"). Editor Issac Olmedo said, "Raúl was highly critical of the government of Ulíses Ruiz Ortiz, whose resignation is being called for by the Oaxaca protestors. He had lately focused most of his articles on the Oaxaca unrest, naming those responsible for the conflict."

Olmedo also stressed to RSF that that in view of Marcial Pérez's activities as an indigenous leader, investigators had quickly discarded the possibility that there might be a work-related motive.

Marcial Pérez was the founder of the indigenous organisation, the Social Welfare Unity of the Triqui region (Unidad para el Bienestar Social de la Región Trique, UBISORT), but had left its leadership two years ago. This organisation was in conflict with another, the Unification Movement of the Triqui Struggle (Movimiento de Unificación y Lucha Trique, MULT).

The 1999 murder of the UBISORT secretary-general was blamed on MULT. The hypothesis guiding the investigation of the Marcial Pérez killing is that the journalist could have fallen victim to the same kind of score-settling. However, he had distanced himself from UBISORT and, since the outbreak of social unrest in Oaxaca, indigenous organisations had joined forces to call for the governor's resignation.

In a separate development, the governor's supporters announced on 11 December that they were lifting a siege of the daily "Noticias, Voz e Imagen" de Oaxaca; the newspaper's work had been hampered and its premises occupied since 17 June 2005.