Journalist Mario Gomez Murdered in Chiapas

Translated by Yaqui for Borderland Beat from: Animal Politico

Journalist Mario Gómez was assassinated in Yajalón, Chiapas;  They took security measures, but despite threats the Chiapas Prosecutor's Office issued precautionary measures. However, some time later they were removed. Companions and people close to the journalist confirmed to Politico Animal that Gómez had denounced threats.

The Mexican journalist was murdered in the southern state of Chiapas on Friday, authorities and his employer said, the latest attack against the press in one of the world’s most dangerous countries for media workers.

As he was leaving his home in the city of Yajalon on Friday afternoon, Mario Gomez was confronted by two suspects and shot in the abdomen, according to El Heraldo de Chiapas, the local newspaper that employed him. Gomez was taken to a hospital, he was attended to by medical emergency personnel, but he died due to the severity of the injuries. The suspects fled the scene.

From Twitter: El periodista Mario Gómez es recibido por el titular de la @pgjechiapas ante amenazas de gente afín a Leonardo Guirao, Diputado Federal.

Mario Gómez shown here with a director of PGJE Chiapas reporting threats by people with ties to the Federal Deputy, Leonardo Gomez.

“We vigorously condemn the cowardly aggression suffered by our colleague,” the paper wrote in an editorial note. “We demand of the competent authorities the investigation of these criminal acts.”

"Executives, reporters, columnists, photographers and staff working in Heraldo de Chiapas, strongly condemn the cowardly aggression suffered by our correspondent correspondent of El Heraldo de Chiapas Mario Gómez in the municipality of Yajalón and for which he lost his life, we demanded competent authorities the clarification of these criminal acts," the newspaper published after the murder of Mario and demanded that the authorities conduct a thorough investigation into the case.

The state prosecutor’s office said that its homicide department would investigate the crime.

“The prosecutor’s office of Chiapas, conscious of the importance of a free press, reiterates its commitment to exhaust all lines of investigation possible to solve this reprehensible crime and bring those responsible to justice,” the office said in a statement.

"I spent eight years working as a correspondent with El Heraldo de Chiapas , where I covered general information with notes on politics, justice and social facts," added one of his colleagues in an interview with the AFP agency .

The state prosecutor's office condemned the killing and said that a special group of ministerial agents have already moved to the municipality to expedite the investigations.

According to the authorities, Mario Gomez, who was 40 years old, had a 7-year-old son, so at the request of his family, preventive police will establish a security perimeter around the home.

From 2000 to date, the organization in defense of freedom of expression Article 19 has documented the murder of 118 journalists in Mexico , possibly related to their journalistic work. Of the total, 45 have been registered in the current government of President Enrique Peña Nieto: 11 in Veracruz, state with the highest number of murders in this sexennium.

Mario Gómez's murder is the seventh in 2018. In the previous months, Carlos Domínguez was murdered in Tamaulipas; Pamela Montenegro , in Guerrero; Leobardo Vázquez , in Veracruz; Juan Carlos Huerta , in Tabasco; José Guadalupe Chan , in Quintana Roo and Rubén Pat , also in the southeastern state.

Mexico has seen unprecedented levels of violence as rival drug gangs splintered into smaller groups after more than a decade of a military-led campaign to battle the cartels.

Journalists, in particular, have become a target for violence in Mexico, which the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) classifies as the most dangerous country in the Western Hemisphere for media workers.

Eleven journalists were killed in Mexico in 2017, and 2016 saw the same number of killings, according to Article 19, a free-speech advocacy group. In the vast majority of attacks, no one has been punished, the group says.