In an emotional ceremony held yesterday the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) honored the memory of journalist Francisco Ortiz Franco, six years after his murder. The organization took advantage of the occasion to express outrage at the lack of justice surrounding this crime and announced that it will submit the case to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) in the next few days.

The decision to petition the international institution is based on legal proceedings tainted since the murder occurred on June 22, 2004, total silence by federal officials on how the investigations are proceeding, and the clear violation of reasonable time limits for solution of the case.

The ceremony was organized by the IAPA and the local weekly newspaper Zeta, where Ortiz Franco was joint editor. His widow, Gabriela Ramírez, his two sons, Francisco and Héctor, and his daughter, Andrea took were present for the screening of the documentary “El crujir de las palabras” (word - Crunching) which narrates the life and death of the murdered newsman and puts the spotlight on the need to combat the impunity and spiraling violence plaguing the Mexican press.

At the ceremony’s close Gabriela Ortiz accepted a plaque in recognition of the human and journalistic qualities that Ortiz Franco had brought to his work, stating: “We are still waiting for justice, for the perpetrators and masterminds to be punished – not the justice that serves only to embellish the speeches of those in power and in fact does not exist if the impunity continues.”

Ortiz Franco was killed in front of two of his children as he was about to get into his car. A masked man, believed to be from the Arellano Félix cartel, shot him four times at point-blank range. Since then, despite the initial mobilization of justice authorities and the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the case has suffered numerous irregularities and today remains completely unpunished.

After remarks calling for justice to be done, by Adela Navarro and René Blanco, the current joint editors of Zeta, José Santiago Healy of the Chula Vista, California, Spanish-language newspaper Diario San Diego, a member of the IAPA Board of Directors, recalled that Ortiz Franco “was a model journalist, honest and reasoned, a man always ready to help, who reminds us that the only way to stop the violence against the free practice of journalism and the people’s right to be informed is to demand that those responsible be arrested and convicted.”

IAPA Press Freedom Director Ricardo Trotti spoke of the work that Ortiz Franco did alongside Jesús Blancornelas and members of the IAPA some weeks before his death, when a committee working with state and federal government officials was reviewing the case file regarding the murder of “Gato” Félix, also a Zeta co-founder who was killed in 1988. The case also remains partially unpunished. The unsolved murder of Félix was the first of 26 cases that the IAPA has submitted to the IACHR since it initiated its Anti-Impunity Project in 1995.

In the IAPA’s name Healy and Trotti promised Ortiz Franco’s family and colleagues that the hemisphere free press organization will not give up its demands for justice in either case. They stated that the documentary “El crujir de las palabras” will raise awareness of the violence and the lack of freedom of expression and pledged that the organization will continue advocating in Mexico “the need to make crimes against journalists federal offenses, remove statutes of limitations in such cases and that penalties be toughened.”

Before the presentation of the 30-minute documentary Trotti praised “the commendable work and commitment to the Ortiz Franco cause by producers María Idalia Gómez and Darío Fritz, investigative reporters working in the IAPA Rapid Response Unit.” In 2005 the two were awarded Mexico’s Planeta Prize for their book “Con la muerte en el bolsillo” (With Death in the Pocket), which describes how drug cartel tentacles reach into the country’s daily life.

Today, at the offices of the Tijuana newspaper Frontera, the IAPA is holding a seminar titled “Disminuir el riesgo, una cobertura segura” (Reducing the Risks, Safe Coverage), an event for editors, publishers, reporters, photographers and cameramen on tools to lower the risks involved in practicing journalism.