WORDS THAT KILL

Writing has consequences. For some writers, they can be lethal. Decades of work with PEN, the international writers’ organization, has schooled me in this. As Chair of a Mexican PEN’s Freedom to Write Committee for twenty-five years, addressing cases of writers under threat around the world, I know that writing can lead to harassment, arbitrary arrest, imprisonment, and worse. Silencing is the preferred weapon of those who fear exposure. I’ve met with concerned PEN colleagues in Prague, Guadalajara, Oslo, Rotterdam, Macedonia and elsewhere to work on freeing those unjustly silenced through imprisonment and torture; honor writers who were murdered or disappeared; and try and devise better ways to protect writers at risk. 

Mexico is one of the most dangerous countries in the world to be a journalist. Here, writers are kidnapped, disappeared, tortured and killed by criminal gangs and corrupt politicians. According to The Committee to Protect Journalists, since the turn of the century at least 141 journalists and other media workers have been killed. Impunity is the norm in crimes against the press. Mexico is the country with the highest number of disappeared journalists in the world, yet not one case of a disappeared journalist in Mexico has ever led to a conviction. 

In addition to killings and disappearances, journalists in Mexico face constant threats, harassment, and physical and psychological abuse, both by public officials and by members of organized crime groups. In fact, public officials are responsible for almost half of the attacks recorded against journalists in Mexico.

In response to this lack of accountability, a program was created in 2012 offering state protection for Mexico’s journalists at extreme risk of threats and attacks due to their work. Yet in spite of this, eight journalists have been killed in the last seven years while enrolled in the program. 

On paper, the program evaluates the risks that journalists face, provides them with protective measures and coordinates with state and federal agencies to mitigate risks. In reality, while it has provided much-needed protection for some journalists, it is failing to adequately protect many others.

As of November 2023, there were 651 journalists enrolled in the program: 469 men and 182 women. But the number of requests for protection that the program has rejected has risen sharply in recent years, from just one in 2020 to 14 in 2021, 49 in 2022 and another 49 in the first 11 months of 2023.

Almost all the journalists that Amnesty International and CPJ spoke to said that they had continued to suffer security incidents after enrolling in the protection program and many described the response as slow, bureaucratic, and lacking in empathy. 

As Mexico welcomes a new administration this year under incoming President Claudia Sheinbaum, let’s hope that the weaknesses in the state protection program can be addressed to better safeguard the country’s beleaguered journalists.