Lourdes Maldonado killing: Mexico’s protection program fails to save journalists – The Washington Post
MEXICO CITY — Veteran news reporter María de Lourdes Maldonado López knew there were people who wanted her dead, so she applied for the only protection she knew: an unusual Mexican government program that promised to defend vulnerable journalists with state-funded bodyguards, bulletproof vests and other protection.
More than 140 journalists have been killed in Mexico since 2000, making it one of the deadliest countries in the world for members of the news media. A decade ago, authorities attempted a solution: the Protection Mechanism for Human Rights Defenders and Journalists, a government-funded private security service for reporters, photographers and activists under threat.
At least 467 journalists are registered in the $23 million-a-year program, which offers a range of safeguards: full-time bodyguards, antiballistic gear, at-home panic buttons and surveillance cameras. In some cases, the government relocates journalists to different parts of the country, a kind of witness protection program for reporters.
Reporters and supporters demonstrated across Mexico on Tuesday. In Mexico City, journalists gathered at the front gate of the Government Ministry, where they hung photos of slain reporters and photographers. They chanted “Justice!” and “No to silence!” and waved signs including “You can’t kill the truth.”
Maldonado López received a panic button to install in her two-story house near the eastern edge of the city. Municipal police were instructed to drive by her home at least once a day. She celebrated the protections, telling friends she felt safer. But she sometimes complained that the police never showed up.
Four days before she was killed, Maldonado López won a settlement in a wrongful-dismissal lawsuit against a former employer, Jaime Bonilla. Bonilla, the owner of the media company Primer Sistema de Noticias, is a former governor of Baja California, the state that was ostensibly protecting Maldonado López.
Priscilla Pacheco Romero and her mother fled their home in the small town of Taxco, in the state of Guerrero, in May 2016 after receiving a death threat in their home. They knew to take it seriously: Days before, Pacheco Romero’s father, local reporter Francisco Pacheco Beltrán, had been killed in front of the family’s house. Priscilla continued to publish the family-run weekly.
It took the government six months to finish the family’s risk assessment. In December 2016, they were assigned a battery of safeguards: closed-circuit television cameras outside their home, special security locks, lighting and barbed wire around the property, an emergency phone number, a panic button, and a remote mechanism to open the house’s front door.