The link between Rubalcava Suárez, (a member of Peña Nieto’s political party PRI), and a threat of violence against a news organisation, does little to alleviate the image of Peña Nieto´s government as one that has focused on economic reforms at the expense of law and order
An elected official from Mexico City has threatened news
site SinEmbargo over its on-line publication of embarrassing photographs,
including one where he poses showing his muscles in front of an armored tank.
Mexico City-based SinEmbargo said that it was originally
treating the matter as a ‘right to be forgotten’ case that started when a
lawyer requested the removal of several photos obtained 2 years ago from the Facebook
profile of Adrián Rubalcava
Suárez, who runs the borough of Cuajimalpa.
According to SinEmbargo, it has received over the last couple
of weeks several
threatening emails from a person who claims to be Rubalcava Suárez’s lawyer and
from a subject who claimed to be part of the official’s legal team, after he
showed up on Friday at the news site’s headquarters to make new threats.
The threats stem from a news feature in which SinEmbargo used several pictures posted by Rubalcava Suárez showing
several members of the PVEM party (Green Ecologist Party) in situations which
depict them as anything but concerned with the environment.
Adrián Ruvalcaba (Via SinEmbargo) |
Unyielding, SinEmbargo published on Saturday a picture of Rubalcava
Suárez in which he is wearing a special armed forces uniform whilst posing as
if he’s ready to open fire with an automatic weapon.
SinEmbargo said that a decision was made to maintain the
photos on-line citing the support of the rights organisation Article19, which
claimed that Rubalcava Suárez’ decision to ‘voluntarily place himself in the
sphere of public debate binds him to more demanding public scrutiny’.
The right to be forgotten
debate in Europe has largely centred on the human rights of individuals to expect
that search engines like Google remove on-line content that is damaging to
their reputation, as well as on its implications for the
right to freedom of expression.
The matter in Mexico, however, has more serious implications
in one of the world’s 15 most dangerous countries for journalists. After all Mexico
is a country where, as put by the Committee to Protect Journalists, ‘journalists
are slain and the killers go free’.
The international human rights organisation Article19 called on Mexico’s FEADLE, attached to the country’s PGR (Attorney General
Office), to investigate the threats made to SinEmbargo.
The government of Enrique Peña Nieto, Mexico’s president,
has in recent weeks been under pressure at home and abroad, following the disappearance
of 43 students and the killing of six in the city of Iguala, with the alleged
participation of local politicians and the police.
The link between Rubalcava Suárez, (a member of Peña Nieto’s
political party PRI), and a threat of violence against a news organisation,
does little to alleviate the image of Peña Nieto´s government as one that has
focused on economic reforms at the expense of law and order, as put by The
Economist in a recent article.
Rubalcava Suárez, who was
elected in 2012 to run Cuajimalpa on his ticket as a candidate for the
coalition that includes his official party PRI and the PVEM, attracted negative publicity for his party and for the government of Peña Nieto, after he posted a
picture of himself with similarities to Peña Nieto’s presidential image.