MEXICO CITY, March 13, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Reporters Without Borders said
Tuesday it had asked the International Criminal Court to investigate the
murders of 102 journalists in Mexico from 2012 to 2018, calling the rash of
killings a crime against humanity.
Another 14 journalists have gone missing in the same period, the media-
rights group said. It urged the Hague-based court, which handles the most
serious international crimes, to investigate the killings and kidnappings as
a targeted campaign against the press.
“These crimes against humanity… (constitute) a generalized and systematic
attack on a civilian population: journalists,” the secretary general of
Reporters Without Borders, Christophe Deloire, told a news conference.
He accused authorities of “evident complicity” in the killings under the
two presidents in question, Felipe Calderon (2006-2012) and Enrique Pena
Nieto (2012-2018).
Reporters Without Borders and Mexican rights group Propuesta Civica, which
are jointly pushing the ICC to act, said they would ask Mexico’s new
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to file a case before the court.
Only the court’s member states, prosecutor or the United Nations Security
Council can bring cases before the ICC.
Mexican officials are “very positive” about the initiative, and Lopez
Obrador is open to the idea, said Emmanuel Colombie, Latin America
representative for Reporters Without Borders.
The watchdog group ranks Mexico as one of the deadliest countries in the
world for journalists, behind only war-torn Afghanistan and Syria.
The explosion of journalist murders in Mexico has coincided with a wave of
violent crime driven by powerful drug cartels and fueled by political
corruption.
The vast majority of the murders have gone unpunished, as do more than 90
percent of violent crimes in Mexico.