User:Crtew/Cecilio Pineda Birto

Cecilio Pineda Birto (September 2, 1979 -- March 2, 2017), a Mexican journalist for the El Universal and La Jornada de Guerrero and a founder and director of his own publication in Guerrero, Mexico, was well known for contributing to nota roja style crime journalism through publications and on social media before his murder.

Personal
Cecilio Pineda was from Michoacán, Mexico, where he then moved to Guerrero, Mexico. He had a wife and two daughters at the time of his murder.

Career
Pineda contributed to El Universal and La Jornada de Guerrero, and had founded the weekly publication La Voz de Tierra Caliente a few years before his death. The journalist continued to cover crime, social issues, and corruption through posts to his Facebook page.He made daily reports to his Facebook to keep his followers updated with the crime going on in Mexico. His reporting attracted weekly threats sent via social media. Pineda was known to be at risk and was already the target of an unsuccessful assassination attempt in 2015. This did not stop him from updating his followers on the different crimes in Mexico.

, director at newspaper La Voz de Tierra Caliente

Death
Cecilio Pineda Birto, a Mexican police reporter, reported that he had received threats from organized crime. Later, he was killed in Ciudad Altamirano in the state of Guerrero in in the Tierra Caliente region on Thursday, March 2, 2017.

In September 2015, attackers attempted to shoot Pineda outside his house. Patricia Corchero, head of the Federal Mechanism for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders and Journalists, a government body, knew Pineda to be at risk for death. The agency offered to relocate him and his family, including his two young daughters, but Pineda told them he wanted to stay in Ciudad Altamirano. The program suspended his case. Program officials conceded they had not found a way to protect Pineda without moving him away.

At the time of his murder, Cecilio, was in a hammock at a car wash waiting for his vehicle. At around 7 p.m. at least two gunmen on a motorcycle stopped at the car wash and shot Pineda repeatedly, the Mexican daily El Universal reported. Pineda died while receiving first aid at the scene. He was shot 10 times, including once in the neck.

Pineda was seriously injured and died at the scene. Pineda publicly said for months that "he received constant death threats from groups of organized crime" in the area. According to newspaper Zeta, reporters in the region said on social networks that Pineda Birto frequently received threats and that he was previously shot at while arriving home in 2015, but was unhurt.

Context
Mexico is the worst, most dangerous place for journalists in the western hemisphere. What makes it worse is the impunity surrounding most of these cases that perpetuates a climate of violence where journalists are left wide open to attacks. Ciudad Altamirano is in one of the most conflicted parts of Guerrero, an area where heroin-producing poppy crops are grown in a region disputed by several drug gangs. Recently, some of the most serious fighting has been between members of The Family cartel and a group known as Los Tequileros. Citizen self-defense militias have also taken up arms in the area to try to protect themselves from kidnappings and killings, and government security forces have deployed a strong presence in the area.The quality of police work is very often abysmal, whether because of inability or, the unwillingness of authorities to conduct swift, exhaustive and credible investigations. The government has invested thousands of dollars in protective measures that journalists can access, including the use of panic buttons, bodyguards and barbed wire for their homes, but it has barely improved the situation.

Impact
Over 88 journalists have been killed between 1992 and 2017 for their work or that was suspected to be for their work, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

There have been some efforts to improve protections for journalists, with the Mexican government launching, in 2009, a Special Prosecutor for Crimes against Freedom of Expression, and following up in 2012 with the Law for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders and Journalists. This law and the efforts to strengthen it have aimed to provide at-risk journalists with measures such as greater police presence, panic buttons, and camera systems in their homes. Currently, they are a 196 journalists and 342 human rights defenders that are being offered some form of protection under this program. However, even with these programs, journalists continue to be murdered in the streets and the Special Prosecutor has so far only achieved three convictions.

Reactions
Msgr. Salvador Rangel Mendoza, Bishop of the Diocese of Chilpancingo-Chilapa, said, "Unfortunately we are living in this climate of insecurity, especially for journalists who write and give information. These criminal groups want to silence their voices, which is why they kill them."

Patricia Colchero, interior ministry's human rights protection unit, said, "A protection measure in the face of this violence is not enough," Colchero said. "We have to achieve prevention, because with protection the moment is going to arrive when it’s not enough."

Jan Jarab, a representative in Mexico of the High Commissioner, said, "No attack on the media or journalists should go unpunished. It is essential to have more information on the protection measures that could have been granted to Pineda Birto to avoid this tragic outcome, in such a way that similar events can be avoided in the future for other journalists."

As a result of the violence experienced over the year, Oscar A. Cantú Murguía, El Norte, “Today, dear reader, I am speaking to you to inform you that I have decided to close this daily because the guarantee for the safety for us to continue journalism does not exist. Everything in life has a beginning and an end, a price to pay. If this is what life is like, I am not ready for one more of my collaborators to pay for it and I am not either."