Three reporters told me about his life experiences according to AP and AFP on Thursday (16/06/2011). They urged the U.S. government to speed up asylum applications they propose.
Emilio Gutierrez Soto said he first received threats in 2005 after writing a story about alleged military involvement in drug smuggling in the northern state of Chihuahua. Three years later, his house terrorized and receive more threats.
He had complained of this threat to the national government, but did not get a meaningful response. Eventually he left Mexico in 2008 with his son who was 15 years old.
Gutierrez was arrested more than seven months in U.S. immigration detention center, until the story unfold on television. Meanwhile, his son was detained for four months. Despite having permission to work, Gutierrez has not been getting the job.
Immigration proceedings against him most likely will not happen before 2012. He appealed to the U.S. Government to make decisions on their cases and to fellow journalists who suffered a similar fate.
Silent
Journalist Ricardo Aldana Chavez, who frequently attack the drug cartels in a radio broadcast, should lose his nephew who was murdered in front of his house. He and his wife, son, and his mother also received death threats until he decided to cross the border into El Paso, Texas, in 2009. "I've covered more than 4,000 murders," he told a group of journalists gathered in the tourist area of Disney's Coronado.
"They are destroying Mexico. They are killing children, pregnant women," said Chávez when speaking about the drug war in Mexico.
Another journalist who received a similar threat was Alejandro Hernandez Pacheco, a cameraman for TV Televisa. He had been kidnapped along with three other journalists in July last year in Durango, Mexico.
Kidnappings carried out by one of the largest drug cartels in Mexico are demanding that Televisa no longer broadcast the news about the drug gangs. He was released a week later and crossed the border in October 2010.
All three journalists asylum request is still pending and while waiting they also face an additional challenge for U.S. public concern over the flood of immigrants from Mexico. However they assert will not return to Mexico. At least 66 journalists were killed in the last four years in Mexico.
Angela Kocherga from Belo TV, who covered the case of asylum requests and death threats against journalists, said, "Violence against Mexican journalists to create quiet zones."
"This is a war on our side of the house and even more to know for what happened in Afghanistan," said Kocherga.
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