A prominent newspaper in Mexico's border city of Ciudad Juarez has published an editorial requesting guidelines on media publishing from drug cartels operating in the city after one of its employees was shot dead by suspected drug operatives last week.
The unprecedented editorial carried by the El Diario de Juarez newspaper on its front page on Sunday was prompted by the killing of Luis Carlos Santiago, 21-year-old photographer working for the paper, last week.
Santiago and a co-worker was shot by unidentified gunmen in Ciudad Juarez on 17 September when they were sitting inside a parked car outside a shopping mall in Ciudad Juarez. Santiago, who suffered seven gunshot injuries, later succumbed to the injuries. But his colleague, El Diario, survived the attack and is currently recovering at a hospital.
"You are, at present, the de facto authorities in this city, because the legal institutions have not been able to keep our colleagues from dying," the Sunday's editorial addressing the drug cartels operating in the city read.
"The loss of two reporters from this publishing house in less than two years represents an irreparable sorrow for all of us who work here, and, in particular, for their families," the editorial said, referring to the 2008 killing of Armando Rodriguez.
"We do not want more deaths. We do not want more injuries or even more intimidation. It is impossible to exercise our role in these conditions. Tell us, then, what do you expect of us as a medium?", the newspaper renowned for its extensive coverage of drug-related violence in the city asked in the open letter to the drug cartels.
Stressing that the editorial was not a sign of surrender to the cartels, the paper insisted that it has not given up on the work it has been developing, and said: "Instead it is a respite to those who have imposed the force of its law in this city, provided they respect the lives of those who are dedicated to the craft of reporting."
On Friday, group of unidentified gunmen shot dead seven people in a bar in Ciudad Juarez. Witnesses said the gunmen stormed the bar and opened fire at a group of people siting at a table. A woman was among those killed in the attack.
Ciudad Juarez, like many other Mexican cities and towns along the border with the US, has witnessed a high level of drug-related violence in recent months as rival drug cartels fight each other for control of smuggling routes.
The city, which has a population of 1.3 million, is located along a major route used for smuggling drugs into the United States, and is directly across the border from El Paso, Texas. More than 2,600 people were murdered in the city of Ciudad Juarez in drug-related violence last year.
The Mexican government says more than 28,000 of its citizens have been killed in drug-related violence since President Felipe Calderon declared war on the country's drug cartels late 2006 and deployed thousands of troops to combat drug-related violence.
In addition to the war against drug cartels, President Calderon had also launched a massive anti-corruption drive named 'Operation Clean-up' to identify and punish public servants with alleged links to the drug cartels. |