Tijuana’s journalist gets phone calls warning her “to be cautious”

ALFREDO AZCARATE VARELA
THE BAJA POST/EDITOR

Tijuana’s journalist Adela Navarro, Director of ZETA, a weekly periodical that has been around for more than 40 years and has a harsh and critic editorial line, has been receiving phone calls telling her “o be cautious” according to Leopoldo Maldonado, Article 19 Mexico Director, an international NGO that advocates and defends free journalism all over the world.

Navarro said that, from April 29 to May 16, someone has been making phone calls to ZETA for a couple of weeks, about nine of them with the same message “Tell Adela Navarro to be very careful”, she said it all started when she published that the State Attorney had concealed information regarding a clandestine graveyard.

She said it all got worse after ZETA published information about alleged corruption in the State Government, and that she already denounced the life-threatening harassment to the State Security Department, but as of May 21 there has been no investigation whatsoever.

Maldonado said the state must provide Navarro with protection, through the Special Attorney for Crimes Against Free Speech and the Protective Mechanism for Human Right Advocates and Journalists, since it is not the first time she is threatened, and as this reporter recalls she has been under police protection a few years ago.

Mexico has turned into a very dangerous country for journalists, there are several sources reporting different numbers but as of the year 2000 there have been more than 160 journalist murders, and 2022 was the worst, when 22 of them were killed, mostly because of investigations about organized crime or Government corruption.