Carmen Aristegui: Attacks on Journalists in Mexico Are a Symbol of a Damaged Democracy Mariana Munoz - Knight Center
go to original November 6, 2016

Mexican journalist Carmen Aristegui during a hearing in Mexico City (Facebook)

Carmen Aristegui, one of Mexico’s most well-known journalists, said her country “is experiencing a profound crisis in terms of human rights, including killings and disappearances of journalists and [other] people.”

For Aristegui, the mistreatment of journalists is a symbol of a damaged democracy.

The journalist, host of the program Aristegui on CNN Español and founder of digital site Aristegui Noticias, delivered the Austin Lecture on Contemporary Mexico on Nov. 2, which was organized by the Lozano Long Institute of Latin American American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Aristegui talked about democracy and freedom in Mexico and the complicated way ahead for the country.

Much of the journalist’s speech focused on human rights violations faced by the country in recent years, including the issue of disappearances. Last July, the national register of missing persons reported a total of 28,474 missing people, according to Aristegui.

“We are talking about very serious human rights violations,” the journalist said.

Mexico has been classified as not free by human rights organization Freedom House. So far this year, 11 journalists have been killed in Mexico. In an additional case, a community radio host was run over by a police car in Oaxaca.

“Freedom of expression, freedom of information, the right to speak, to inform, is absolutely damaged, with cases of journalists who were murdered, censored, disappeared, in a list too long and too much in impunity in recent years,” Aristegui said.

The journalist emphasized that murder is not the only way in which freedom of expression is damaged; methods such as legal tools are also used.

Read the rest at Knight Center

Related: Only 11% of Murders of Journalists in Latin America and the Caribbean Have Been Resolved in the Last Decade: Unesco (Journalism in the Americas)

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