(Bloomberg) — Authorities are investigating the death of a journalist who was shot and killed in Michoacan state as violence against media workers in Mexico surges, drawing international criticism.
Armando Linares Lopez was killed in a private residence and suffered gunshot wounds, the state prosecutor’s office said on Twitter. A local journalists’ group said he was murdered in front of his children, and criticized the government for failing to protect him, according to the El Sol de Morelia newspaper.
Linares worked with the media outlet Monitor Michoacan and he’s the second journalist with that publication to be killed this year. Linares had lamented in a video the threats against him and his coworkers after the murder of his colleague Roberto Toledo in late January.
“We’re not armed. We don’t have weapons. Our only defense is the pen,” he said in the video.
Mexico has seen a rash of journalist homicides with at least eight so far this year. That’s led to international calls for President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s government to take action to stem the violence, including from U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the European Parliament.
AMLO, as the president is known, called on Blinken not to interfere and likened the European Parliament to “sheep” for joining attacks against him by Mexico’s opposition. The lawmakers said AMLO should stop criticizing journalists and do more to guarantee press freedoms.
Read More: Mexican Leader Calls European Lawmakers ‘Sheep’ in Angry Letter
The president has lashed out against a growing number of reporters he says oppose him. He has defended his administration’s human rights record, saying that the government is investigating the homicides and has made arrests in most of the cases.
“These are not state crimes. We will never call for someone to be killed,” he said on Wednesday. “And there’ll be zero impunity.”
Linares did not accept government protection, though that does not justify his murder, AMLO said.
(Update with details on murder starting in second paragraph and president’s comments in eighth.)
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
©2022 Bloomberg L.P.
