The year is four weeks old and a fourth journalist has already been killed in Mexico. Roberto Toledo was attacked by three people and shot dead on Monday in the town of Zitácuaro, Armando Linares, head of the local news portal Monitor Michoacán, for which Toledo works, said in a video on Facebook.

Employees of the online portal from the western Mexican state of Michoacán have been receiving threats for months, Linares said. Toledo was murdered because of revelations by Monitor Michoacán about corruption in politics. The government condemns the act, a spokesman for the presidential office wrote on Twitter.

Two other journalists and one reporter had already been killed before Toledo this year: a few days ago, journalist Lourdes Maldonado was shot multiple times in the face in her car in Tijuana. Also in Tijuana, photojournalist Margarito Martínez was shot dead while leaving his home. A week earlier, José Luis Gamboa, the director of an online portal, was killed in the eastern Mexican city of Veracruz – reportedly with a stabbing weapon.

More killed than in Afghanistan

According to a report by Reporters Without Borders, Mexico was the most dangerous country for journalists for the third year in a row. In no other country not at war are so many reporters murdered. According to this, seven journalists were killed in connection with their work in the North American country in 2021 – Afghanistan was second with six such cases.

According to the government, more than 90 percent of attacks and killings of journalists and activists in Mexico go unpunished. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador repeatedly publicly denigrated critical journalists as liars.

Source: DPA

Image Credit: Getty

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