Photographer Margarito Martinez, specialized in police cases, was killed on Monday in Tijuana. An association also asked the prosecutor’s office to investigate the death of another killer journalist in Veracruz on January 10th.
Le Monde with AFP
He had been threatened with death in December 2021 by bloggers. Margarito Martinez, a Mexican photoreporter was murdered, Monday, January 17, in Tijuana in northwestern Mexico.
Collaborator of several Mexican publications, the photographer was killed at mid-day near him in Tijuana, border town with the United States, said the Ministry of Security of the State of Lower California. The photographer, specializing in police cases, was the target “of a firearm aggression”, according to the regional departmental release.
Martinez, 49, had been threatened in December 2021 by bloggers, told the NGO Yosisoyperiodista (“Me, I am a journalist”), who asks the authorities of protective measures for journalists. The General Prosecutor’s Office announced the opening of a survey by declaring: “Freedom of expression, in all its forms, is a fundamental right of citizens”.
At least seven journalists killed in 2021
In the State of Veracruz, the State Commission for the Protection of Journalists requested the State General Procules Parquet of the State to implement the “Investigation Protocol for Office against Freedom of Expression” after The homicide of José Luis Gamboa, stabbed on January 10 in the port of Veracruz. His body has been identified only four days later by his family.
The victim no longer worked as a journalist but as an analyst on social networks, according to a local source. It was not subject to any “antecedent of aggression” or “threats” and it was not protected, according to the State Commission.
Mexico is considered one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists, exposed to the reprisals of narcotural cartels at work in several of the thirty-two states of the country. At least seven journalists were killed in 2021, according to a count of the France-Presse agency, which tries each time to establish whether the victim was still in activity, and if it was killed for his investigations or his articles.
A hundred journalists have been killed since 2000, based on the numbers of the Human Rights Commission.