'I
worry that the people that ordered the murder of Javier, could be
also behind me because we were covering the same story.'
Tariq
Ali talks to investigative journalist, Anabel Hernández, about
Mexico’s struggle with drug trafficking and corruption, to which
the US turns a blind eye whilst having a finger in the pie. They also
talk about freedom of press and the hopes for the coming presidential
election in Mexico.
Hernández
speaks about the recent assassination of her famous colleague Javier
Valdez and expresses her fear that she is also
being targeted for exposing corrupted Mexican officials who are
involved with the drug cartels. She also says that, despite the
threat, she will continue to do her job, because the people must know
in order to do the right things.
Both
journalists were investigating a war within the Sinaloa cartel after
its leader "El Chapo" Guzmán was extradited to the US.
As
Hernández says characteristically: 'I worry that the people that
ordered the murder of Javier, could be also behind me because we were
covering the same story.'
As
we read from Wikipedia,
Hernández “has confronted head-on – at significant personal
risk to her and her family – corruption and the narcotics trade in
Mexico, including the alleged collusion between the drug barons and
elements within the Mexican political and administrative system.”
Concerning
the assassination of Javier Valdez she said that:
Now the
government is trying to say that this was because someone tried to
steal his car. Even in Culiacán that is a very dangerous place no
one shoots anyone twelve times to steal a car. So, for me, it is very
clear that to be able to kill a journalist as famous and important as
Javier Valdez, someone of the government gave the permission to do
it.
She
also spoke about the assassinations of other journalists who were
involved in exposing those behind the drug cartels:
These
journalists have not just have been murdered by members of the
cartels. In most of the cases members of the government involved
directly. Municipal government, state government, or, the federal
government. It's not a problem If you are talking in general aspects,
but if journalists like Javier, or me, or others, start to put names,
that is a point where things get really dangerous. I'm under threat
since December of 2010, not because I published this book "Narcoland"
related with "El Chapo" Guzmán. The problem is that in
this book I put name by name the members of the last governments
since the decade of the 70s until now, who are involved with the
Sinaloa cartel. I put the name of presidents, I put the name of
generals, I put the name of chiefs of the police, and because of
that, these officials want to kill me.
Anabel's
book Narcoland:
The Mexican Drug Lords And Their Godfathers
documented how, for decades, successive Mexican governments from the
president down had been on the payroll of the Sinaloa cartel. These
are the people she blames for the killing of more than 100
journalists in a decade.
Now that's it been proven Assange works for Putin, can we get these guys for him? Oh wait, he's not a journalist.
ReplyDeleteThe classic MSM propaganda.
DeleteThe establishment starts an open war against the real whistleblowers