Eduardo González
The Popular Parliamentary Group in Congress has presented a Non-Law Proposition in which it urges the Government to “condemn the attacks and direct accusations against journalists carried out by the highest authorities in Mexico.”
The motion, presented on April 10 for debate in the plenary session of the Lower House, recalls that the run-up to the Mexican presidential elections on June 2 “is conditioned by a series of events that have caused a climate of destabilization for a brother country.”
“One of the most serious situations that Mexico faces is violence, especially against the press,” continues the PP, which assures that Mexico “is one of the most dangerous places to practice journalism in the world, the worst of all.” if we do not consider war zones.”
This situation is “alarming” because “the president of the country himself”, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, “is the one who has adopted a speech against journalists, whom he points out and accuses of doing ‘factious’ journalism, of responding to ‘interest groups’, to slander, manipulate and be ‘chaste’.” “It has even been referred directly to national and international media,” says the motion.
These speeches “are constantly delivered in the press conferences that the Mexican president offers daily,” in which “a space called ‘Who is who in the lies of the week?’” has been included through which “the discredited the press and some journalists on more than one occasion,” continues the PP.
The motion even claims that the president has recently leaked the mobile phone number of the New York Times correspondent in Mexico due to an investigation into the president’s relatives’ alleged ties to drug trafficking. “When questioned about these events,” the PP continues, “far from showing a show of empathy or retracting, López Obrador said that it had not been a mistake, he even stated that he would make public a journalist’s cell phone again when he is away.” the dignity of the president, and limited himself to saying ‘if the journalist is worried, she should change her phone’”, a “reprehensible” attitude in “a country in which 43 journalists have been murdered in the last six years.”
The motion also recalls that, in March 2022, the European Parliament approved a Resolution in which it condemned the threats, harassment and murder of journalists and human rights defenders in Mexico and expressed its concern about “the systematic criticism made by the highest authorities of the Mexican Government against journalists and their work.” After the Resolution, the Mexican Government issued an official statement in which it described the MEPs as “sheep”.
For all these reasons, the PP considers that “it is appropriate for Spain to join the requests of the international community in relation to this situation that occurred in Mexico” and urges the Government to “condemn the attacks and direct accusations against journalists carried out by the highest authorities of Mexico”, to demand from the Mexican Government guarantees for the safety of journalists and freedom of the press, to ask the Government of Mexico to refrain from publishing personal information of communicators and to “promote a policy of bilateral cooperation with Mexico in matters of strengthening human rights and freedom of the press.”
