Reporter killed in restaurant she owns hours after journalist shot dead in separate attack in Mexico

The U.N. human rights workplace in Mexico mentioned Wednesday journalists in Mexico want extra safety, after gunmen killed a journalist whose Fb information web page coated the violent western Mexico state of Michoacan. Then lower than 24 hours later an leisure reporter within the western metropolis of Colima was killed inside a restaurant she owned.

Journalist Mauricio Solís of the information web page Minuto por Minuto was shot to dying late Tuesday simply moments after he carried out a sidewalk interview with the mayor of town of Uruapan. State prosecutors mentioned a second individual was wounded within the capturing.

Solís had simply completed an interview on the road outdoors metropolis corridor with Mayor Carlos Manzo. Manzo advised native media he had walked away and “two minutes later, I believe, and only a matter of meters away, we heard gunshots, 4 or 5 gunshots.”

“We sought cowl as a result of we thought the assault was geared toward us,” Manzo mentioned. “After a couple of minutes we discovered that Mauricio was the one they attacked.”

Manzo mentioned he couldn’t rule out a connection between the interview and the killing.

The radio station the place Solis labored mourned his killing in a assertion revealed on social media.

“Mauricio was greater than a colleague, he was an unconditional pal, a supply of inspiration and a tireless voice within the service of our group,” the station mentioned.

The U.N. rights workplace mentioned Solís was a minimum of the fifth journalist killed in Mexico this yr. It mentioned he had beforehand reported safety issues associated to his work. His Fb web page reported on group occasions and the drug cartel violence that has wracked town.

“His killing is a wake-up name to defend the appropriate to info and freedom of expression in Mexico,” the workplace wrote.

An rising variety of the journalists killed in Mexico have been self-employed and reported for native Fb and on-line information websites.

Uruapan is the closest giant metropolis to Michoacan’s avocado-growing area, and it has been the scene of drug cartel extortions and turf battles between gangs. The cartels demand safety cash from native avocado and lime orchards, cattle ranches and nearly another enterprise.

Solís was reporting on a suspicious hearth at a neighborhood market simply earlier than the capturing. Gangs have typically burned companies that refuse to pay extortion calls for.

Then on Wednesday afternoon, leisure reporter Patricia Ramírez González was discovered with critical accidents inside her Colima restaurant and died on the scene, in line with the Colima state prosecutor’s workplace.

Native media mentioned Ramírez, who was higher often known as Paty Bunbury, revealed a weblog on native leisure and was a contributor to a Colima newspaper.

The U.S.-based Committee to Shield Journalists condemned each killings and known as for clear investigations.

Wracked by violence associated to drug trafficking, Mexico is without doubt one of the world’s most harmful international locations for journalists, information advocacy teams say.

Reporters With out Borders says greater than 150 newspeople have been killed in Mexico since 1994 — and 2022 was one of many deadliest years ever for journalists in Mexico, with a minimum of 15 killed.

Media employees are commonly focused in Mexico, typically in direct reprisal for his or her work masking matters like corruption and the nation’s notoriously violent drug traffickers.

In August, a Mexican journalist who coated one of many nation’s most harmful crime beats was killed by gunmen, and two of his government-assigned bodyguards had been wounded.

In April, Roberto Figueroa, who coated native politics and gained a social media following by means of satirical movies, was discovered lifeless inside a automotive in his hometown of Huitzilac in Morelos, a state south of Mexico Metropolis the place drug-fueled violence runs rampant.

All however a handful of the killings and abductions stay unsolved.

“Impunity is the norm in crimes in opposition to the press,” the the Committee to Shield Journalists mentioned in a report on Mexico in March.