FRIENDS and family paid their final respects on Tuesday to slain journalist Javier Valdez, who apparently paid with his life for his award-winning reporting on the country’s violent drug gangs. Media and rights groups protested earlier on Tuesday to demand the Mexican government catch the killers of the fifth and most high-profile journalist murdered this year in the country’s drug-trafficking ganglands. The front pages of major newspapers displayed portraits of the martyred Valdez, 50, an AFP contributor who was shot dead in broad daylight on Monday in Sinaloa state. Journalists took part in a demonstration in downtown Culiacan carrying pictures of Valdez on Tuesday.

The journalist was one of the most prominent reporters on Mexico’s deadly drug war. He had been a contributor to AFP for more than a decade. The killing fanned a wave of anger at the authorities, with rights groups saying corrupt officials are preventing journalists’ killers from being punished. Some media in Sinaloa cancelled their Tuesday editions in protest. NGO Articulo 19 says 105 journalists have been murdered and a further 23 have disappeared since 2000. Of those cases, 99.7 per cent remain unsolved, meaning the culprits have gone unpunished, it says.

Valdez had written extensively for Mexican newspapers. His last contribution to AFP was 11 days ago, about the extradition to the United States of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, former head of the notorious Sinaloa cartel. Mexico ranks third in the world for the number of journalists killed, after Syria and Afghanistan, according to media rights group Reporters Without Borders.

Published in Dawn, May 18th, 2017