Two female journalists found dead in Mexico City

[News_Editor]

Two female journalists found dead in Mexico City

2011-09-02 22:19:07 GMT+7 (ICT)

MEXICO CITY (BNO NEWS) -- Two female journalists were found murdered in a park in a suburb south of Mexico City on early Thursday morning, officials said on Friday. It follows the murder of another journalist late last month.

Mexico City attorney general's office reported that two joggers found the naked bodies at around 6.20 a.m. local time on Thursday in the park El Mirador in the capital's southern suburb of Iztapalapa. Both bodies appeared to have been strangled and their hands were tied behind their backs.

The bodies were identified as Ana María Marcela Yarce Viveros, public relations manager and co-founder of the political magazine "Contralínea," and Rocío González Trápaga, a freelance journalist who has worked for the television station Televisa. The magazine condemned the attack and demanded justice for those responsible for the murders.

The Mexican House of Representatives has observed a moment of silence in memory of the journalists while the National Human Rights Commission said it has launched an investigation into the murders. The commission added that, with the deaths of González and Yarce, eight journalists have been killed so far this year and at least 74 since 2000.

"We strongly condemn this escalation of terror against journalists in what is already one of the hemisphere's most dangerous and deadliest countries for the media," Reporters Without Borders said on Friday. "This double murder comes just a week after Humberto Millán Salazar, a presenter on Radio Formula and editor of the online newspaper A-Discusión, was murdered in the northwestern state of Sinaloa."

Reporters Without Borders said more and more journalists are facing the choice between exile or self-censorship, which was demonstrated last year when the largest newspaper in Ciudad Juarez, El Diario de Juarez, asked drug cartels what they could do to stop further violence against its reporters. "We are waiting for the government to act," Reporters Without Borders said.

Late last month, the body of abducted Mexican journalist Humberto Millán Salazar was found in a field in the northern state of Sinaloa with a gunshot wound to the head. The killing of Millán came less than a month after Yolanda Ordaz de la Cruz, a crime reporter and columnist for the regional daily Notiver in the east-coast port city of Veracruz, was found with her throat slit after being abducted 48 hours earlier.

According to government figures, a total of 15,273 drug-related crimes occurred in Mexico in 2010, while more than 42,000 people have died in drug-related violence since Mexican President Felipe Calderón began his campaign to fight organized crime in December 2006.

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