On the night of Nov. 5, 2011, 18 men armed with AK-47s broke into the installations of a newspaper in Codoba in Mexico’s Veracruz state. Over the course of a few minutes, they strong-armed employees, trashed the newsroom and doused the building with gasoline.
Closed-circuit video cameras at the paper, El Buen Tono, captured the assault. Look at minutes 3:25 through 6:30 to see most of the action.
While the attack was bad enough, what happened a day later was even more revealing of the criminal assault suffered by parts of Mexico’s media. Prosecutors in Veracruz state confiscated the video. The supposition of local journalists is that they did so to prevent airing of the video to help the public identify the mobsters. It is a further sign that organized crime has literally “captured the state” in places like Veracruz, part of the Zetas cartel turf. With prosecutors in their pockets, the Zetas enjoy vast impunity.
El Bueno Tono said it received the video anonymously.
The excellent website of the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas said a dozen journalists and designers quit El Buen Tono after the assault, fearing for their lives.
Where's the PGJ when you need them or have they also been bought and paid for? What a disgrace.
Posted by: Citizen57 | 02/16/2012 at 08:19 PM