Two more journalists slain in Mexico, bringing 2022 total to 11

Two more Mexican-based journalists have been killed in the country by unidentified assailants, bringing the total number of journalists killed there this year to 11.

The Guardian reported that journalists Yesenia Mollinedo Falconi and Sheila Johana García Olivera were murdered Monday afternoon in the town of Cosoleacaque. Initial reports said the reporting duo was killed inside their vehicle while waiting outside a nearby convenience store. 

Mollinedo and Olivera were both employees of the local publication El Veraz, with Mollinedo serving as El Veraz’s director, The Guardian noted. 

In a statement on Twitter, Veracruz’s state attorney general’s office said it plans to launch an investigation into the journalists’ deaths, saying it will “establish the causes and find the person or persons responsible for it.” 

“The investigative trilogy, prosecutors, experts and ministerial police, carry out the proceedings to establish the causes and find the person or persons responsible for it,” the office said in Spanish.

“The State Attorney General, Verónica Hernández Giadáns, assures that there will be no impunity; All lines of investigation will be exhausted, including his journalistic activity,” the office concluded. 

Mollinedo’s and Oliveria’s deaths follow the death on Thursday of El Debate columnist Luis Enrique Ramírez, who was found on a dirt round near a major highway. 

Sinaloa state Gov. Rubén Rocha said in a statement that the government plans to conduct an investigation into Ramírez’s death. 

Attacks on journalists in Mexico have surged 85 percent since President Andrés Manuel López Obrador took office in 2018, with each Mexican state experiencing a slew of violent acts toward journalists, The Guardian noted.