Yessenia Mollinedo, director of the news portal El Veraz, and Sheila García, a reporter for that site, were shot in the municipality of Cosoleacaque, the state prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
“All lines of investigation will be exhausted, including his journalistic activity,” said prosecutor Verónica Hernández, quoted in the text.
Consulted by AFP, the organization that defends freedom of the press Reporters Without Borders (RSF) indicated that it is still “confirming information” about the murder of the two women.
“We are starting the documentation, consulting other sources that can confirm both the journalistic work and its possible link with this work,” Juan Vázquez, of the NGO Article 19, told AFP.
Condemning the act, the governor of Veracruz, Cuitláhuac García, reported that an operation was deployed to capture the murderers.
The double crime occurred after Luis Enrique Ramírez, a columnist for the newspaper El Debate, was murdered last Thursday in the state of Sinaloa (northwest). It was the ninth homicide of a communicator so far in 2022, according to RSF and Article 19.
The authorities are trying to determine if in all these cases the crime was linked to the work of the victims, a task that, according to private associations, is difficult in areas with a large presence of organized crime, such as Veracruz.
“We ask the ministerial authority that the journalistic activity of both communicators be the main line of investigation of the cowardly crime,” the Veracruz Commission for the Care and Protection of Journalists said in a statement.
According to activists for freedom of expression, given the difficulty in making their informative activity profitable, some communicators must alternate journalism with other jobs.
With some 150 journalists killed since 2000, Mexico is one of the most dangerous countries for the press, according to RSF.
