The Human Rights Center at UC Berkeley School of Law has published a multiyear investigation documenting the deaths of 337 journalists and human rights activists in Mexico under the tenure of former President Andr\u00e9s Manuel L\u00f3pez Obrador.<\/p>\n
On Sept. 24, the HRC launched \u201cUnder Attack: Targeting of Journalists and Human Rights Defenders in Mexico,\u201d a public platform detailing the systemic targeting of Mexican journalists and human rights activists during L\u00f3pez Obrador\u2019s six-year presidential term from 2018 to 2024. Mexico was classified as the deadliest country in the world for journalists during this period.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we found was deeply troubling,\u201d said Lindsay Freeman, the senior director of international accountability at the HRC, in an email. \u201cDuring those six years, 78 journalists and 259 human rights defenders were killed, and nearly all of those cases remain unsolved.\u201d<\/p>\n
The HRC began to investigate the treatment of Mexican journalists and human rights activists in 2024, originally intending to compile and relay its findings to the International Criminal Court as evidence for prosecutors to open an examination into the country\u2019s situation.<\/p>\n
However, following sanctions against the ICC by the second Trump administration, the HRC was unable to submit its findings, so it decided to adapt them for public release.<\/p>\n
The HRC\u2019s findings largely attribute the targeting of journalists to the actions of L\u00f3pez Obrador\u2019s government. In an article published in the digital policy journal Just Security, Freeman argues that the HRC found five \u201cinterlocking instruments\u201d attributable to the persecution of journalists by the Mexican government.<\/p>\n
Persecution is a crime under the Rome Statute, the international treaty that created the ICC, which Mexico ratified in 2005. The HRC does not claim its findings are grounds for prosecution, but rather that they contain \u201cinformation relevant to each element of persecution\u201d that warrants examination.<\/p>\n
One of the five instruments outlined by the HRC in its investigation is L\u00f3pez Obrador\u2019s use of presidential power to \u201ccast journalists as enemies\u201d to millions. Using artificial intelligence tools, the HRC team found thousands of instances in 1,437 of L\u00f3pez Obrador\u2019s morning press conferences in which he used \u201chostile rhetoric\u201d against journalists.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe president used his daily press conferences to discredit and attack the press, which we counted 2,827 times, and networks of fake accounts linked to state media amplified that rhetoric into threats and harassment online,\u201d Freeman said.<\/p>\n
Additionally, the HRC traced instances of unlawful surveillance. It found that despite opposing claims by L\u00f3pez Obrador, the Mexican government unlawfully spied on journalists and human rights activists during his tenure.<\/p>\n
The researchers traced how Mexico\u2019s military acquired and used Pegasus spyware against journalists and activists. The Mexican government acquired the spyware, which can covertly compromise smartphones and extract their contents, in a 2011 purchase from Israeli cyberintelligence firm NSO Group at a strip club.<\/p>\n
The platform features repositories of case files, a deaths database, an archive of press conferences and military and intelligence organizational charts.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur work stands on the shoulders of Mexican journalists and human rights defenders,\u201d Freeman said in the email. \u201cThey documented all of this while living through it, often at great personal risk, and without their reporting this platform would not exist.\u201d<\/p>\n
Because the HRC is unable to submit its findings to the U.S.-sanctioned ICC, Freeman said she and her team \u201chaven\u2019t been in contact with the Court at all.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, she expressed hope for the platform to be used and carried forward by others.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat could mean organizations outside the United States bringing it to the ICC, prosecutors in Mexico using it at home, or courts in other countries acting under universal jurisdiction,\u201d Freeman said in the email. \u201cWe have already been really moved by the response from journalists in Mexico, many of whom see their own experiences reflected in it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Freeman also encouraged the public, particularly students, to draw connections between her team\u2019s findings in Mexico and trends in the United States.<\/p>\n
\u201cGovernments attacking the press and using the courts to punish their critics is not a problem confined to one country, and we are already seeing some of the same tactics here at home,\u201d Freeman said in the email.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Human Rights Center at UC Berkeley School of Law has published a multiyear investigation documenting the deaths…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":481629,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[188808,127570,61125,188811,188810,340,188812,188809,46488,2457,188814,143,145,144,114849,188813,1519,149,27724,435],"class_list":["post-481628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-andrs-manual-lopz-obrador","tag-hrc","tag-human-rights-center","tag-icc","tag-international-criminal-court","tag-israel","tag-just-security","tag-lindsay-freeman","tag-marco-rubio","tag-mexico","tag-nso-group","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-pegasus","tag-rome-statute","tag-trump","tag-uc-berkeley","tag-uc-berkeley-law","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=481628"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481628\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/481629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=481628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=481628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=481628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}