Pubdate: Mon, 14 May 2007
Source: Miami Herald (FL)
Email:  http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/
Address: One Herald Plaza, Miami FL 33132-1693
Fax: (305) 376-8950
Copyright: 2007 The Miami Herald
Author: Marion Lloyd

JOURNALIST SLAYINGS ON RISE

Five evenings a week, Amado Ramirez fielded complaints from his radio 
listeners on everything from corrupt public officials to the booming 
drug trade in this famous resort city.

Then, on a Friday night, just blocks from a beachside strip of bars 
where thousands of tourists were partying, a gunman ambushed Ramirez 
in his car as he attempted to leave his Radiorama office. Bleeding 
profusely from bullet wounds in the chest, side and thigh, Ramirez 
dragged himself several yards to a hotel to plead for help, according 
to police and witness reports. Minutes later, he collapsed dead.

The April 6 slaying came as a shock even in this city inured to 
drug-related violence. Ramirez, 50, who also worked as a 
correspondent for the Televisa TV network, was the most prominent of 
the more than two dozen reporters and editors slain nationwide since 
2000. To his frightened colleagues, his death confirmed a chilling 
fact: Mexico, in the grips of an escalating drug war, has become the 
world's second-deadliest country for journalists after Iraq.

"Of course we're scared," said Ricardo Castillo, news director for 
Acapulco's leading daily, El Sur. "He was the most visible of all of 
us, and his murder was meant to send a message."

A Show Of Force

The killing was intended as a show of force by traffickers waging a 
turf war for control of both the local market and the lucrative 
smuggling routes to the United States, said Castillo.

"More than an effort to silence the media, it's part of a strategy to 
instill terror," he said. "The assassination of a journalist isn't 
just any killing. It touches the basic fibers of society."

The danger appears to be rising.

Statistics vary among watchdog groups, but they agree that Mexico has 
surpassed Colombia, a country plagued by decades of guerrilla and 
drug violence, in the number of journalists killed each year.

Seven Mexican journalists were slain last year, according to a count 
by the Miami-based Inter American Press Association. The Paris-based 
Reporters without Borders tallied nine killings, and the Federation 
of Mexican Journalist Associations reported 11.

Three journalists were killed in Colombia last year, according to 
Reporters without Borders. The group counted 65 journalists and media 
assistants slain in Iraq over the past year.

Many Mexican reporters, particularly in the embattled border states, 
have stopped writing about organized crime, and, as the drug war 
spreads south, journalists across the country are becoming targets.

On May 3, World Press Freedom Day, the decapitated body of a local 
drug dealer turned up outside a newspaper in the eastern port city of 
Veracruz. According to local press reports, the killers left this 
warning: "For Milo, you'll all pay. You know it, and more heads of 
damned reporters are going to roll." The threat was presumed to be 
directed at Milo Vera, a local columnist.

"There's total impunity," said Jose Antonio Calcanio, president of 
the Federation of Mexican Journalists Associations, which represents 
137 journalist groups nationwide.

"The government has no interest in resolving any of these cases," 
Calcanio said. "It's only when there's a prominent case like Amado 
Ramirez that they pretend to act, but then they forget, and nothing happens."

Two suspects were arrested in the days after the radio host's 
slaying, but both were released on bail. Many of Ramirez's colleagues 
suspect the men were scapegoats.

In February 2006, amid pressure from international watchdog groups, 
then-President Vicente Fox created a special prosecutor's office to 
focus on crimes against journalists. The results have been slim, 
critics say, in part because the office doesn't have jurisdiction 
over organized crime cases. Those fall under the jurisdiction of 
another office, the deputy attorney general's office for organized crime.

'No Teeth'

"They haven't been given the necessary teeth to do their job," said 
Carlos Lauria, Americas director for the New York-based Committee to 
Protect Journalists, who was active in pressuring for the creation of 
the special prosecutor's office. Still, he blamed the country's 
corrupt and inefficient judicial system for the lack of progress in 
most of the cases.

The special prosecutor, Octavio Orellana, was not available for 
comment. But he has defended his office in the past, saying its main 
job is to prevent violence against journalists by squelching threats.

Nearly 1,000 people have died in gangland-style killings related to 
drug-trafficking in the first four months of the year, compared with 
2,000 in all of last year, according to Mexico City's El Universal 
newspaper. The southwestern state of Guerrero, home to Acapulco, has 
been one of the hardest hit, with some 300 gangland homicides last year.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman