UN calls on Mexican authorities to protect journalists after murder of reporter in Nayarit

( Spanish) — The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Mexico called on Mexican authorities to protect journalists following the latest murder of a journalist in Mexico on Saturday, the UN said in a statement on Monday.

“The Office of the High Commissioner requested the authorities at all levels to work in a coordinated manner to guarantee the protection of the journalistic union of Nayarit,” the UN statement read.

Journalist Luis Martín Sánchez disappeared on July 5 and his body was found on Saturday on an abandoned road in Tepic, Nayarit, authorities reported.

Sánchez was a correspondent for the newspaper La Jornada. On the same day as Sánchez’s disappearance, two other journalists disappeared and were found alive days later, authorities said.

According to the UN statement, those responsible for the crime also took the journalist’s computer, mobile phone and other equipment. Sánchez also collaborated with the local digital outlet Crítica Digital Noticias.

The Undersecretary of State for Citizen Security of Mexico, Luis Rodríguez Bucio, said during a press conference that two journalists were murdered in Mexico in 2023.

“Regarding murders of journalists, we have two cases this year. We had already seen Marco Aurelio Ramírez and now Luis Martín Sánchez in Tepic, Nayarit”.

However, the non-profit organization Reporters Without Borders reports that six journalists have been killed so far in 2023, and one more remains missing in the state of Veracruz.

“The murder of a journalist, the disappearance of a journalist terribly impacts his family, but above all it impacts society, it impacts the right to information, it impacts democracy, and that is a dimension that suddenly the authorities do not see or they don’t want to see,” Balbina Flores, from Reporters Without Borders, told En Español.

“In other words, the impact of these murders has a huge impact on society,” Flores said.

Flores urged the authorities to carry out “a prompt, exhaustive, independent and effective investigation to clarify the facts and punish all those responsible.”

The president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, lamented the murder on Monday and said: “it is bad news.”

The same day, a group of journalists and media workers held protests in the capital asking the authorities not to abandon them and to speed up investigations to find and punish those responsible.