Report tallies 337 killings of journalists, rights defenders
The report, titled “Under Attack: Targeting of Journalists and Human Rights Defenders in Mexico,” assesses whether levels of violence and disparaging rhetoric directed at journalists and activists during López Obrador’s presidency amounted to a pattern of persecution under the Rome Statute, which established the International Criminal Court. The Berkeley team based its argument on statistical data on deadly violence and a quantitative analysis of public rhetoric.
The Human Rights Center documented 337 killings — 78 journalists and 259 human rights defenders — and compiled 75 detailed case files covering killings and enforced disappearances. Together, the data sets form the evidentiary backbone for the legal argument that state conduct during the López Obrador years could meet the Rome Statute’s threshold for a “widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population.”
The rhetoric analysis used artificial intelligence to examine 1,437 of López Obrador’s daily morning news conferences — a signature practice of his presidency — and identified 2,827 instances of language that the report characterized as “explicitly disparaging and aimed at undermining the credibility and safety of independent journalists and civil society organizations.” According to the report, the volume of those statements contributed to an increasingly hostile environment for press and human-rights work in Mexico.
The report goes further than earlier analyses of violence in Mexico, arguing that the state not only failed in its duty to protect journalists and activists but “actively operated in a hostile manner toward them.” It links confrontational government rhetoric to the alleged use of unlawful surveillance tools, including Pegasus spyware, which the report says was allegedly operated by Mexico’s Defense Ministry.
Lindsay Freeman, senior director of International Accountability at the Human Rights Center and an international criminal law specialist, said the evidence gathered could provide a basis for the ICC prosecutor’s office to consider opening a preliminary examination under the Rome Statute. Freeman said the alleged conduct should not be considered in isolation. Under her interpretation of Article 7 of the Rome Statute, unlawful surveillance, harassment, stigmatization and physical violence could constitute elements of the same pattern if evidence showed they were part of a widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population and were carried out pursuant to or in furtherance of a state or organizational policy.
The Berkeley team originally prepared the report as a confidential submission to the court. The authors decided to release it publicly after assessing what they described as limitations arising from the current geopolitical environment.