Mexican crime journalist Norma Sarabia was gunned down outside her residence by armed gunmen in Mexico’s Humanguillo on Tuesday night.
Norma was a staffer at local news outlet Tabasco Hoy, where she had worked for the past fifteen years.
Hector Tapia, the paper’s editorial director, spoke out on Twitter saying, “We deeply regret her death and we sympathize with her family.”
Several people have been killed in Huimanguillo city in connection with fuel smuggling in past few months.
Mexico, a deadly place to be a journalist
Sarabia is now the sixth journalist to be killed in the country this year alone.
In 2018, ten journalists were gunned down.
The organization Reporters Without Borders ranks Mexico the third most dangerous country in the world for reporters, after Afghanistan and Syria.
Sarabia’s publication Tabasco Hoy announced a reward for information leading to Sarabia’s killers and asked, “Six journalists assassinated; most killers unpunished. Security?”
We at the Coalition For Women In Journalism urge the Mexican government to launch a nationwide investigation on murders of journalists, activists and citizen.
“The CFWIJ has seen women journalists to be targeted ruthlessly in the country since we started our work. In fact the gory methods of how women journalists have been targeted here for years, is not something we at the CFWIJ have seen anywhere else in the world,” said the founding director Kiran Nazish. “We request the state to cooperate with efforts to bring safety to free speech in the country. To especially look into the sensitive matter of targeting of women reporters, who are being targeted quite dynamically in this country. It won’t happen without the government and other concerned authorities taking well measured and firm steps to protect women journalists, and free speech in general. Unless this is done, the Mexican people will not feel safe.”
More than 100 people have been killed in Mexico since 2000. These murdered are mostly linked to drug-related trafficking and political corruption. The vast majority of these murders remain unpunished.