Mexican President Censures US Over State Report Critical of Human Rights
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador lashed out at the U.S. after the State Department’s annual human rights report painted a critical picture of the country’s press freedoms.
The report, released Tuesday, offers an analysis of human rights issues facing every nation, with the section on Mexico warning of gang violence along with censorship and intimidation of the media.
“We don’t get involved in opining about human rights violations in the United States. We’re respectful,” López Obrador said at a press conference.
“We can’t weigh in on what’s happening in another country, so why does the U.S. government weigh in on issues that only affect Mexicans?”
The State Department’s report notes that some “journalists were killed or subjected to physical and cyberattacks, harassment, and intimidation (especially by state agents and transnational criminal organizations) in response to their reporting.”
“This limited media’s ability to investigate and report, since many of the reporters who were killed covered crime, corruption, and local politics. High levels of impunity, including for killings or attacks on journalists, resulted in self-censorship and reduced freedom of expression and the press.”
The U.S. report also cites reporting from a number of Mexican news agencies finding that NOTIMEX, the government’s news agency, “ordered journalists to eliminate or not publish content about certain government institutions and officials.”
Reporters Without Borders’s press freedom ranking lists Mexico at 143 out of 180 countries for press freedom.
López Obrador has recently made other comments critical of the U.S., citing President Biden’s immigration policies as a factor in the high number of migrants heading to the southern border.
“Expectations were created that with the government of President Biden there would be a better treatment of migrants. And this has caused Central American migrants, and also from our country, wanting to cross the border thinking that it is easier to do so,” he said last week.
“People don’t go to the United States for fun, they go out of necessity.” (https://thehill.com/policy/international/545756-mexico-president-censures-us-over-state-report-critical-of-human-rights)