A Mexican journalist was found dead today two blocks from the Veracruz government palace, after being kidnapped from outside of his office last night.
Reports state that Víctor Manuel Báez Chino was forced into a grey van by three armed gunmen just before midnight yesterday. Mexico’s El Universal says a search begun last night, that ended when Báez’s body was found around 5am this morning.
Veracruz social communication co-ordinator Gina Domínguez Colío expressed condolences on behalf of the governor and announced full support for the family of Báez, who was the director of the Police Reports section of the daily Milenio Xalapa. She also announced that the government had begun a full inquiry.
“Those who attacked and killed Victor Báez committed a crime that hurt his family and offends the journalists’ union, and also seek to intimidate a society and make a government retract its determination to combat criminal groups that seek to undermine our right to live in peace,” the official stressed, according to El Universal.
Báez’s murder is part of a string of journalist deaths and disappearances in Mexico.
On 28 April, also in Xalapa, weekly newspaper reporter Regina Martínez was found dead in her home; the body had bruises and showed signs of strangulation. On May 3, the remains of three photographers were found on in a canal in Boca del Río, a municipality also in the state of Veracruz.
On May 17, Marco Antonio Ávila García was kidnapped by three masked gang members at a car wash in Ciudad Obregon in the northern Mexican state of Sonora. The tortured body of the journalist was later found by side of a road.
A Mexican journalist and her two-year-old son disappeared 8th June under “mysterious circumstances” in the northern city of Saltillo, located in state of Coahuila about 850km north of Mexico City. Cardoso reportedly telephoned friends at 2am to report that she had returned home safely, but she did not show up to work the following day. When relatives went to her house Friday, they discovered that the journalist and her child were not there. Everything was in disarray, and her camera was smashed on the floor.
