SUN Staff Writer Jose de Wit attended the following press conference during a reporting conference he attended last month in El Paso.
Government officials and public figures in Rio Arriba may whine and harrumph about coverage they receive in the media. Some from time to time might even threaten a lawsuit against the SUN.
But in Mexico, the government is allegedly resorting to death threats for journalists who criticize it, two Ciudad Juarez journalists seeking asylum in the United States said in a Feb. 20 press conference at the University of Texas at El Paso.
The two journalists — Emilio Gutierrez Soto, a reporter for El Diario del Noreste in Asunción, Mexico, and Jorge Luis Aguirre, editor of the news website La Polaka — said they received death threats last year resulting from their coverage of drug-related violence in the Mexican border town.
However, where previously it had been the drug cartels who were responsible for most of the violence, now military and government officials are behind as many killings and death threats, the journalists said.
“The situation for the Mexican press is grave,” Aguirre said. “I fear they are in danger. Unfortunately the only government manifesting itself is through the use of bullets.”
Gutierrez Soto said military forces the Mexican government deployed against drug cartels in the state of Chihuahua have since taken to violence and threats against civilians, including journalists and local police.
And the Mexican civilian government is complicit in the violence because it has neglected to properly investigate the thousands of murders and kidnappings committed in Chihuahua each year, Gustavo de la Rosa Hickerson, an official from that state’s Human Rights Commission, said.
Aguirre said he and his family fled to El Paso under temporary visas after he received a call on his way to the Nov. 13 funeral of murdered Juarez journalist Armando Rodriguez, saying Aguirre would be the next to die.
Gutierrez Soto he and his son sought political asylum at the U.S. border after also receiving death threats last June. Rather than granting them asylum immediately, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement separated Soto from his son and incarcerated him until late January, he said.
Both journalists still fear for their lives outside Mexico — but if they were killed here, at least their deaths would be investigated, they said. In Mexico, government agencies have yet to investigate alleged threats Aguirre received from a representative of the Chihuahuan governor, he said.
“Not a single authority has mentioned my case, and I doubt it ever will,” Aguirre said. “The only thing that has resulted from my complaint (of the threats) has been attempts to link my name to drug trafficking.”