Mexico: Report- Female crime reporter Norma Sarabia gunned down.
Norma Sarabia becomes the sixth journalist to be killed in the country this year. The CFWIJ urges the government to take immediate action against these killings.
Mexican crime journalist Norma Sarabia was gunned down outside her residence by armed gunmen in Mexico’s Humanguillo on Tuesday night.
Norma was a staffer at local news outlet Tabasco Hoy, where she had worked for the past fifteen years.
Hector Tapia, the paper’s editorial director, spoke out on Twitter saying, “We deeply regret her death and we sympathize with her family.”
Several people have been killed in Huimanguillo city in connection with fuel smuggling in past few months.
Mexico, a deadly place to be a journalist
Sarabia is now the sixth journalist to be killed in the country this year alone.
In 2018, ten journalists were gunned down.
The organization Reporters Without Borders ranks Mexico the third most dangerous country in the world for reporters, after Afghanistan and Syria.
Sarabia’s publication Tabasco Hoy announced a reward for information leading to Sarabia’s killers and asked, “Six journalists assassinated; most killers unpunished. Security?”
We at the Coalition For Women In Journalism urge the Mexican government to launch a nationwide investigation on murders of journalists, activists and citizen.
“The CFWIJ has seen women journalists to be targeted ruthlessly in the country since we started our work. In fact the gory methods of how women journalists have been targeted here for years, is not something we at the CFWIJ have seen anywhere else in the world,” said the founding director Kiran Nazish.
Mexican journalist and CFWIJ member Ixchel Cizneros added, “It is outrageous that in Mexico journalists are still getting killed for their work, that cases continue to accumulate and victims do not find justice.
Norma Sarabia was a journalist who had denounced harassment by authorities in the state of Tabasco; last night she was murdered when she got home. She was a single mother and now it is her son who will suffer for life for this crime.”
Ixchel says, journalists in Mexico including she herself, “demand justice for Norma and for the more than 100 journalists murdered in the country.”
Kiran Nazish also reiterated, “We request the state to cooperate with efforts to bring safety to free speech in the country. To especially look into the sensitive matter of targeting of women reporters, who are being targeted quite dynamically in this country. It won’t happen without the government and other concerned authorities taking well measured and firm steps to protect women journalists, and free speech in general. Unless this is done, the Mexican people will not feel safe.”
More than 100 people have been killed in Mexico since 2000. These murdered are mostly linked to drug-related trafficking and political corruption. The vast majority of these murders remain unpunished.
[CFWIJ Remembers Anabel Salazar murdered in Mexico]
[CFWIJ Remembers Alicia Diaz Gonzalez, murdered in Mexico]
[This story will be updated as we get more details from the ground]
Report by Sitara Arshad, with assistance from Ixchel Cizneros in Mexico.
Press Contacts:
<Press@WomenInJournalism.org>
Sitara Arshad
<Sitara@WomenInJournalism.org>
Sulome Anderson
Advocacy Director
<Sulome.Anderson@WomenInJournalism.org>
