American journalists who carry water for gun control note: when civilians are disarmed, journalists are in the cross-hairs. The following story republished from borderlandbeat.com is a cautionary tale . . .
Less than 24 hours after the death of a journalist in Oaxaca, a reporter in Tamaulipas state has been killed by a group of armed men. She is the eighth journalist killed in Mexico this year. On the morning of June 20, journalist and teacher Zamira Esther Bautista, 44, was shot while in her car outside of her home in Ciudad Victoria, the capital of Tamaulipas state in northeastern Mexico.
According to Proceso, Bautista was a freelance journalist and teacher who had covered the social section in newspapers El Mercurio and La Verdad de Ciudad Victoria.
A cartulina left with the journalist attempted to link her to members of a criminal group in the city, according to a statement from the state government. The statement from The Grupo de Coordinacion Tamaulipas simply referred to her as “a woman was deprived of her life…” It did not identify her as a full-time teacher and a part-time journalist.
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| El mensaje que dejaron junto al cuerpo de la periodista. Foto:Proceso |
The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) explained that these types of notes are common in the city and state “as means of seeking to discredit citizens and justify ‘the settling of accounts.’”
Proceso reported that she was killed at 6:30am as she was entering her car to go to shool to her teaching job. It reported that seconds later a group of armed men in another car drove up and shot her.
Proceso also reported that with this case “more than 15 journalists killed in Tamaulipas since 2010 to date, and about 17 are missing, and that Tamaulipas is the only state in Mexico where organized crime groups have banned journalists write about violence.
According to Journalism in the Americas Blog Bautista’s murder comes just one day after that of Elidio Ramos Zárate, who was killed in Oaxaca while photographing a robbery in-progress at a convenience store. Zárate had been covering the intense confrontations between police and teachers in that state.
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| Ramos Zarate |
Teachers in Oaxaca have been protesting reforms for about a week. On June 19, violence came to a head as police tried to clear a roadblock in Nochixtlan where authorities would later say six were killed. Ramos Zárate was killed in nearby Juchitán.
Ivonne Flores, editor of El Sur, said in an interview with Radio Fórmula that a group of masked men threatened Ramos Zárate and other co-workers on June 18 in order to stop them covering the violence, according to Animal Politico.
The journalist reported that there are no conditions for working in the state of Oaxaca. “We cannot do our work, we cannot freely take a photo, cover material as it should be done, to keep society informed,” Flores said, according to Animal Politico.
In 2015, Mexico saw an attack against journalists every 22 hours, according to the annual report from freedom of expression organization Article 19 Mexico.
According to a report by La Sociedad Interamericana de Prensa (SIP) Ramos Zarate, the journalist killed a day earlier, worked for El Sur, Independent Diario del Istmo, in the city of Juchitan de Zaragoza, Oaxaca.
The other reporters murdered this year are: Manuel Torres (May 14), Francisco Pacheco Beltran (April 25), Moses Dagdug Lutzow (February 20), Anabel Flores Salazar (February 8), Reinel Martinez Cerqueda (January 22 ) and Marcos Hernandez Bautista (January 21).