Eliseo Barron Hernandez was the second journalist to be murdered in Mexico in the last month whilst others have faced daily harrasment and attack. In this atmosphere of fear and intimidation, the government is also using more subtle measures, making it increasingly difficult for independent media to operate.

Last month, Carlos Ortega Samper was shot dead on World Press Freedom day, and recently the tortured body of the journalist Barron Hernandez was found left in a plastic bag.

While pursuing this campaign of violence, the government is persecuting independent media by being excessively selective in their allocation of licences and advertising contracts.

In an effort to drive out community broadcasting stations the Federal Attorney General’s office has been ignoring applications for licenses and then selectively closing down those that are critical of the government under the pretext that they are operating without a licence.

In an interview this month Senator Carlos Sotelo Garcia, president of the Congress’ Radio, Television and Cinematography Commission said: “They are shutting down community media outlets, saying that they are operating without a licence, but what they fail to say is that they have not acted on the media outlets’ applications for licences.”

Sotelo Garcia pointed out the in the last two years 140 community radio and television stations have found that their application for a licence have been ignored or delayed and have therefore found themselves “criminalised” by the government.

The small community radio station, Tierra y Libertad, has just had legal action filed against it. Tierra y Libertad has been providing information on workers’ rights, health and legal assistance to the poorest neighbourhoods in Monterrey for the last seven years.

Tierra y Libertad had been waiting for a response to its application for a licence since November 2002 but in June 2008 it was closed down by 100 federal police officers.

On 12 March 2009, Héctor Camero, a member of the community, was summoned to appear before the prosecution. The punishment employees face is up to 12 years in prison and a fine of US$100,000 for operating illegally.

As independent radio stations struggle to exist at all the government is putting the squeeze on independent publications by discriminating in its allocation of its advertising contracts for national media.

Editor, Rodriguez Castaneda, filed a complaint to the National Human Rights Commission on 19 May concerning the federal discrimination his magazine Proceso has experienced.

Castaneda noticed that government advertising began to decline under the former president Vicente Fox “who arbitrarily restricted advertising destined for Proceso because of the information we distributed about him and his associates”.

Since President Felipe Calderon has been in power, Castaneda stated that their advertising contracts have diminished to practically nothing despite Proceso having a higher circulation than many other magazines.

These more subtle methods of repression have been understandably over shadowed by a shocking series of attacks and intimidation. In the last two months, inaddition to the murders of two journalists there have been at least four attacks, three arrests and two accounts of threats against journalists in retaliation to negative or critical articles. 

Twenty four hours after he was kidnapped the body of journalist Eliseo Barron Hernandez was found in Tiahualiko, Durango, on 26 May. The body had been left in a plastic bag and it appeared that the journalist had been tortured.

Barron Hernandez, who works for La Opinion newspaper, had been reporting on a case involving 302 police officers who were dismissed following a scandal, eight of which, he reported, were also involved in alleged kidnappings.

In his last article, on 25 May, Barron Hernandez reported that a police officer and bodyguard of the director of the Municipal Public Security office had been fired. The same day he was kidnapped by eight masked men in his home in front of his family.

Carlos Ortega Samper, a reporter for Durango City newspaper El Tiempo du Durango, was shot dead on 3 May, ironically World Press Freedom. The murder is believed by his editor to have been motivated by his recent articles and a day before his murder, in an article, Ortega Samper described the threats he had received from local government officials in reaction to his criticism.