The judicial harassment against journalists has doubled in the last three years, which reflects that this practice is being used improperly and abusively by public figures, officials and politicians against the freedom of expression and press.
By participating in a virtual conference on the impacts of judicial harassment, as an effective mechanism to attack the press freedom in mexicoLeopoldo Maldonado, representative of Article 19 in Mexico, he warned that between 2019 and 2021 the lawsuits for moral damages against representatives of the press have doubled in our country, which are intended to inhibit the work of the media.
The defender explained that according to figures from Article 19, in 2019 there was a record of at least 21 legal proceedings against journalists who were accused of non-pecuniary damage, figure that increased to 39 for the year 2020 and 40 for 2021.
“Open processes have doubled from 2019 to 2021 before administrative or judicial authorities to inhibit the exercise of journalism. The demands are of an electoral, criminal and also civil nature for non-pecuniary damage with the aim of exerting economic and psychological wear on the defendants, ”he stressed.
Leopoldo Maldonado also indicated that these cases have been reproduced and escalated at the local level, as he highlighted the cases of judicial harassment exercised in the state of Pueblawhere 16 of the 39 non-pecuniary damage lawsuits against journalists or media filed in 2020 were registered, which, he said, speaks to the fact that the virulent discourse does escalate to other levels, since seven of those lawsuits are against the digital media In consultation.
However, given such data, the activist lamented that in Mexico it seems that facing a lawsuit of this nature is a lesser evil, this because the press is submerged in other violence.
“They threaten, kidnap, physically attack, torture and murder journalists in Mexico, so there is a plexus of actions that the press is facing in this country, that this exponential increase in claims for moral damages is lost in this sea of violence,” he lamented.
In addition, by defining them as cumbersome, exhausting processesnot only economically but also psychologically, experts in the matter agreed that the objective of lawsuits for moral damages is not necessarily to win the process, but what is sought is to submit or subject the journalist to a long process to distract him of their work of informing, which is why it is considered judicial harassment.
“Most of these demands come from public officials or people with public projection and this is where the judiciary must take into account the standards… that in the case of people with public projection and with public functions there is an impact of interest in the information , therefore the threshold of tolerance for criticism, even in what can be considered an interference in their privacy, honor or reputation, must be higher than that of any individual, but it seems that in our authoritarian political culture the equation is the other way around , the higher the charge, the intolerance is greater,” added Maldonado.
For his part, the journalist and academic, Sergio Aguayopointed out that litigation filed by the former governor of Coahuila, Humberto Moreira against him it has been a surreal experience, since he has been able to document the absences and omissions of the federal power and a slow, corrupt and bureaucratic justice, while the disbursement for this process has cost him almost half a million pesos.
“It has been a surreal but very educational experience about the Mexican judiciary, because former Governor Moreira has seriously committed himself, he has invested an enormous amount of resources I guess, because he has expensive lawyers, mine are willing to prolong to wear out, to look for punish me in different ways with judicial processes at two levels, the federal and the state,” he said.
At the time that he said he had documented the absences and omissions “of the federal Executive, the CNDH has been absent not only from my case but from journalistic affairs for three years, the Feadle de la Segob is a bureaucratic, passive rag that really does not does nothing but annoy with ridiculous demands.”
Meanwhile, Enrique Gómez Orozco, director of AM Guanajuato, mentioned that after being sued, both he and his family, by the mayor of León, Bárbara Botello, “this process has taken away my time and peace of mind. It scares me that any journalist who makes a judgment call in an opinion column or even gets a news story wrong risks being sued and the court costs breaking you.”
In his case, he regretted that this judicial process has represented an expense of 250 thousand pesos notary expenses and stationery.
While the director of RiotwelveIsmael Bojorquez, considered that “the purpose of these lawsuits is to screw up the state of mind of the defendants and manage to inhibit the freedom that one needs as a journalist. I know of cases of colleagues who have not published things because they have been threatened with lawsuits if they do.”
