Other blow-back and human rights massacres with US complictity – Veracruz journalist shot dead in home with wife and son

Veracruz journalist shot dead in home with wife and son
Published on Tuesday 21 June 2011.

Reporters Without Borders is shocked to learn that Miguel Ángel López Velasco, an editor and columnist with the local online daily Notiver, was shot dead along with his wife and his son in their home in the east coast city of Veracruz early yesterday, just seven days after a reporter was found murdered in the northwestern state of Sonora.

“The violence against journalists in Mexico never ends,” Reporters Without Borders said. “We call on the authorities to ensure that López’s work as a journalist is treated as the most likely motive for his murder and that those responsible are identified and brought to justice as quickly as possible.”

López’s colleagues told Reporters Without Borders that the 55-year-old journalist, his wife and his 21-year-old son were asleep in their home in the northern Veracruz suburb of López Arias when unidentified armed intruders burst in and shot all three.

Also known by the pen-name of “Milo Vera,” López had been working for Notiver for about 20 years, first as a crime reporter and then as a columnist and deputy editor of the crime and local news section. In his column “Va de Nuez,” he wrote about crime, kidnappings, corruption and abuse of authority in the Veracruz area. He had also written about the case of Evaristo Ortega Zarate, a journalist missing since April 2010.

López had been threatened. In 2007, drug traffickers left a human head outside the Notiver office with this message (in which López’s pen-name was misspelled): “We are leaving you a present here (…) Heads are going to roll. Milovela knows it and many others know it too. These heads are for my dad. Yours truly, A son of Mario Sánchez and the New People.” …more