Mexican journalists protest what they say is government indifference to the dangers they face

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Mexican journalists are fed up with what they say is government indifference to the dangers they face on the job.

A large contingent marched through Mexico City streets this week to protest and demand action. They handed a strongly worded letter to the attorney general’s office, complaining that dozens of cases involving murdered journalists have gone unsolved over the last decade, and urging the government do something about it.

The letter accused the government of ‘indifference and silence’ and demanded a halt to the ‘impunity in the cases of aggression, disappearances and murders of journalists.’

Mexican journalist groups maintain that 55 reporters and media workers have been killed in nine years. Other advocacy organizations, with stricter definitions of what a journalist is, or which look for a direct link between the journalist’s work and his or her murder, list a smaller number.

By all accounts, Mexico remains the most deadly country in Latin America for journalists, and one of the most deadly in the world. Virtually none of the cases has been solved -- something which Mexican journalists say increases the likelihood that more will be killed.

-- Tracy Wilkinson in Mexico City