Mexican journalist suffers brutal beating after critical stories
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Version 0 of 1. For more than a year, Karla Silva typed out the news in a cramped storefront office for El Heraldo de Leon, a newspaper in the central Mexican town of Silao. The front door was always open, she said, so that passing residents could drop off tidbits of local interest. The city styled itself as a tourist destination, but the 24-year-old reporter’s stories sometimes explored darker themes. Last month, she quoted a local leader accusing the mayor of ignoring the plight of farmers and the crime wave in the area. She wrote about a video circulating of a rough police arrest and an “extreme abuse of authority.” At 5:30 p.m. Sept. 4, three young men walked into the office and faced Silva and a secretary. “They simply entered, one of them said my name, and when I looked up, he punched me in the face,” Silva recalled in a telephone interview. “After the first punch, I fell. And then he kicked me in the face, in the head, all over my body.” “He kept telling me to stop with my stories,” she said. News of the savage beating has spread widely in Mexico, a particularly dangerous country for reporters, as photos of Silva’s bloodied face circulated on the Internet. Suspicion immediately fell on the mayor, Enrique Benjamin Solis Arzola, who is from the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, the PRI. He has denied involvement. Threats, intimidation and physical violence are common against reporters in Mexico. More than 50 journalists have been killed or have disappeared there since 2007, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, who condemned Silva’s beating. In dangerous cities, newspapers often go silent about violence, fearing retribution. Reporters for even the biggest national papers sometimes don’t use bylines when reporting from cartel-controlled areas. In the days since the attack, Silva’s colleagues have rallied around her. Earlier this week, about 100 journalists marched on the mayor’s office in Silao, shouting, “Karla is not alone" and “We are all Karla,” and demanded his protection of the free press. But now that she's out of the hospital -- with swelling on the brain and blurred vision -- she said the attack may be enough to drive her from her profession. “I’m worried and scared,” she said. “As a journalist, I don’t know if I’m going to return to my job. Time will tell. I will do what is possible so that this doesn’t affect my work, but I haven’t decided.” “It’s very difficult what the journalists are confronting here every day,” she said. And as she told the Spanish newspaper, El Pais: “There is no worse enemy than a man who is afraid.” Gabriela Martinez contributed to this post. |