The IAPA denounced the murder of Hugo Alfredo Olivera Cartas in Michoacán and called on the Mexican government to take immediate steps to guarantee press freedom and promptly solve this crime.

At 11:00 p.m. on Monday Olivera Cartas received a phone call in the newsroom of El Día de Michoacán, where he was editor and covered the security and justice beat. Shortly thereafter he said he was leaving to meet with one of his sources. Five hours later he was found dead in his van with five gunshot wounds behind the left ear and signs of having been handcuffed, according to the initial inquiries by the Michoacán State Attorney’s Office.

IAPA President Alejandro Aguirre, editor of the Miami, Florida, Spanish-language newspaper Diario Las Américas, declared, “This new murder in Mexico reflects the climate of violence prevailing in the country, with no solution in sight. It’s urgent that authorities halt the culture of violence, put an end to it and investigate promptly to identify the motives and arrest and bring the killers to justice.”

Initially the authorities stated that the crime was motivated by robbery since Olivera Cartas’ wristwatch, rings and cell phone were stolen. The following day, Tuesday, however, El Día de Michoacán offices and his home were both ransacked and computer disks holding his records of violent incidents in the region disappeared.

The family of Olivera Cartas, 27, and married with two children, told the IAPA’s Rapid Response Unit that they were unaware of any threats. His father, David Olivera, is the owner of the newspaper and is also head of the city’s Civil Protection Unit.

The chairman of the IAPA’s Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, Robert Rivard, editor of the San Antonio Express-News, Texas, said, “It is outrageous that we have to refer so frequently to acts of violence in Mexico; they only increase the tendency to resort to self-censorship, which is devastating to the people’s right to know.”

Michoacán, along with the state of Guerrero, is where the highest number of journalists has been murdered in recent years and where authorities have failed to solve a single case. In the last eight months alone two journalists have gone missing – María Esther Aguilar Casimbe and Ramón Angeles Zalapa, both from the newspaper Cambio de Michoacán, correspondents in the Michoacán cities of Zamora and Laracho, respectively.

The murder of Oliver Cartas brought to seven the number of journalists murdered in Mexico so far this year, in addition to six who have disappeared during the same period.