The Committee to Protect Journalists is calling on Mexican authorities to "immediately and credibly" investigate an attack on a ...
The Committee to Protect Journalists is calling on Mexican authorities to "immediately and credibly" investigate an attack on a nationally-renowned investigative journalist's home that saw her two dogs killed and her reporting records stolen.
According to the CPJ, a number of unidentified individuals broke into investigative reporter Lydia Cacho Ribeiro's home in Puerto Morelos, located in the southern Mexican state of Quintana Roo, on July 21.
The suspects are alleged to have killed the journalist's two pet dogs and stolen much of her reporting equipment and data, including a laptop computer, audio recorder, three cameras, memory cards and ten hard drives.
The hard drives contained information on sexual abuse cases that the journalist, who in 2005 penned a book exposing a child sex trafficking ring alleged to have involved a number of politicians, had been investigating.
The alleged attackers also damaged a number of Cacho's personal belongings, including photographs, the CPJ said.
Cacho told CPJ that she was speaking with local authorities about the break-in, while Ricardo Sánchez Pérez del Pozo, head of the office of the Federal Special Prosecutor for Attention to Crimes Committed Against Freedom of Expression, confirmed to the organization that an investigation had been opened.
Meanwhile, in a Twitter statement translated from Spanish, Jesus Ramirez Cuevas, a spokesperson for the Mexican government, said that "bullying of journalists and activists will not be tolerated."
"We rejected threats against Lydia Cacho," he said. "Freedom of expression and information are sacred rights and we work to guarantee them, protecting journalists and fighting impunity."
However, CPJ's Mexico representative Jan-Albert Hootsen said that the "blatant and outrageous attack" on Cacho's home, "underscores the Mexican state's continuing inability to protect even its most celebrated reporters."
"Time is running out for the government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to provide the country's journalists with a comprehensive plan to protect them and combat impunity in crimes against the press," Hootsen said.
"The blatant and outrageous attack on the home of Lydia Cacho underscores the Mexican state's continuing inability to protect even its most celebrated reporters," said Jan-Albert Hootsen, CPJ's Mexico representative. "Time is running out for the government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to provide the country's journalists with a comprehensive plan to protect them and combat impunity in crimes against the press."
Mexico is considered by the CPJ to be the "most dangerous country" for journalists in the Western Hemisphere, with at least three journalists having been killed in direct relation to their work in 2019, according to the organization, which is still investigating four other cases to determine whether journalists' work was a motivating factor. According to the CPJ's research, Mexico also leads the world in the number of "disappeared reporters," with at least 14 missing journalists.
In a statement posted to Twitter, Cacho vowed not to be deterred by the attack, saying that "as much as they try, I will not stop investigating." She wrote: "Fear will not colonize my spirit. I am a journalist, I am a feminist and defender of Human Rights.
"Power implies social responsibility. To those who threaten me, I say 'Here Nadie Se Rinde." This is a Spanish phrase which translates to "nobody here gives up."
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