Civil organizations regretted the response of the Government of Mexico to the European Parliament’s resolution on the protection of journalists; They said that far from acknowledging the serious risk they face, it weakens alliances with the European Union.
In a statement, the organizations joined the call of the parliament and demanded that the Mexican State promote a public policy of comprehensive protection for human rights defenders and journalists.
They indicated that it is urgent to generate a safe and conducive environment for the defense of human rights, to effectively and adequately protect this population group with measures proportional to the risk, to provide comprehensive reparations to the victims and to adopt forceful measures to reverse the high rates of impunity.
“We regret the response of the Mexican State to the resolution that, far from recognizing the serious risk faced by human rights defenders and journalists, weakens alliances and ignores the relationship of close cooperation that has been maintained for years with the institutions of the European Union,” they said.
Read: AMLO’s government accuses the European Parliament of having “interventionist mania disguised as good intentions”
The statement is signed by organizations such as Mundial Contra la Tortura (OMCT), Amnesty International Mexico, ARTICLE 19 Regional Office for Mexico and Central America, Network for the Rights of Children in Mexico (REDIM), Casa del Migrante de Saltillo – Frontera con Justicia, Comunicación e Información de la Mujer (CIMAC), the National Center for Social Communication (Cencos), among others.
Faced with the seven cases of journalists killed so far in 2022, the European Parliament yesterday approved, by a majority, a resolution to ask the Mexican authorities to guarantee the protection and creation of a safe environment for communicators and human rights defenders.
In the evening, the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador rejected the resolution approved by the European Parliament; for the Mexican administration, it is false that the country is “an official war zone,” as the parliamentarians considered.
In a statement, he accused the MEPs of having an “interventionist mania disguised as good intentions”, as well as supporting “the reactionary and coup strategy of the corrupt group that opposes the Fourth Transformation”.
Read: Lourdes, Margarito, Heber, José Luis: progress in the investigation of journalists killed in 2022
This morning, President López Obrador acknowledged that he drafted the communiqué for the European Parliament, with the help of presidential spokesman Jesús Ramírez and “other comrades” while traveling to Chiapas, in response to a resolution he described as “slanderous.”
He said he cannot tolerate foreign governments, with a “conservative tendency,” disrespecting the country’s disinformation-based institutions and accused them of having a “colonialist” mentality.
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