Mexico’s journalists have long faced bullets. Now lawsuits against them are rising

CAMPECHE, Mexico (AP) — Politicians and judges are increasingly attempting to shut down press freedoms in Mexico, raising concerns among journalism watchdog groups.

In 2025, a new lawsuit against journalists or media outlets was filed every six days in Mexico, 69 cases in total, according to Article 19, a press freedom watchdog, triple the previous year.

Politicians have discovered that lawsuits are “a much more effective way to silence the press because they give the impression of legality,” said Jan-Albert Hootsen, the Mexico representative for the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Tribuna, a 50-year-old daily newspaper in the southeastern state of Campeche, became the flagship media outlet during the administrations of the Institutional Revolutionary Party which governed the state for nearly a century.

Then Layda Sansores, of the ruling Morena party, won the 2021 gubernatorial election. And things quickly changed.

She pulled government advertising from Tribuna — advertising that was necessary for the paper to continue to publish. She started her own television program promoting her administration and demeaning journalists, handing out Oscar-style awards — called the “Golden Pinocchio” — to journalists she deemed the biggest “liars.”

Tribuna ran columns railing against her, and those columns sometimes went beyond her politics. Criticism intensified with gender-specific and homophobic attacks. Then in 2024, Tribuna, starved of revenue, ceased to print though it continued to publish online, including scathing articles against Sansores.

Sansores responded with several civil and criminal complaints against Jorge Luis González, who served as its editor for three decades and continues as a contributor, alleging moral damage, gender-based political violence and hate speech.

In mid-2025, one of Sansores' criminal cases against González led judges to bar him from journalism for two years and to have a judicial censor review Tribuna articles before online publication. Press freedom watchdogs strongly denounced the decision, arguing that prior censorship is unacceptable and concerned the decision might set a precedent.

González said he immediately appealed the measures and a judge temporarily suspended them pending a final ruling of the case.

Sansores has denied persecuting or censoring the press and says her lawsuits are to protect women. She did not respond to requests for comment.

Several local reporters say she also changed the way authorities try to control the press. Campeche officials now “stop you with lawsuits,” said Ronny Aguilar, a local journalist and digital content creator.

Reporters Without Borders has denounced the growing and widespread use of laws as weapons against the press, especially in the Americas.

U.S. President Donald Trump has banned three news outlets’ reporters from the White House, escalating his efforts — in the courts and through administrative action. The Associated Press also is suing following the president’s decision last year to bar AP reporters from the Oval Office, Air Force One and some events in retaliation for the news outlet’s decision not to follow his lead in changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico, which lies partially in Mexican and other waters.

In Mexico, the weaponization of the judicial system comes amid an increase in journalist killings. Seven journalists were killed this year, five of them in less than three months, one of the deadliest spikes in over a decade, according to CPJ.

Some of those targeted with lawsuits, including Veracruz crime reporter Rafael León, acknowledge that the experience has changed how they work. Although terrorism charges against León were dropped after President Claudia Sheinbaum intervened, he now reports less and works in fear, he said.

Sheinbaum has softened the hostile tone her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, used toward some journalists, but a new federal regulation to protect “audiences' rights” set to take effect this month has alarmed press watchdogs.

The president insists it will better protect the public’s right to complain about any publication without leading to censorship. Some groups fear it could allow the state to intervene in some disputes ahead of Mexico’s 2027 elections.

Leopoldo Maldonado, the U.N. special rapporteur on freedom of expression, warned that although governments may have legitimate reasons to combat disinformation or hate speech, laws that turn the state and judges into arbiters of the truth “generally end very badly.”

Among other problems, he said, such laws often rely on vague concepts that should not be addressed through criminal law.

Legislation targeting fake news has proved problematic in Turkey, Malaysia and Singapore, Maldonado said. Counterterrorism laws in Africa’s Sahel region “are used against the political opposition” and journalists covering armed conflicts there. Citing the example of Russia, he warned that the use of the term “foreign agents” to restrict journalism is spreading across the Americas.

Many government officials fuel hate campaigns and there is a need to regulate the excessive power of digital platform owners and give civil society a greater voice in that process, Maldonado said.

In Campeche, the state Human Rights Commission and activists are promoting legislation to protect human rights defenders and journalists.

Meanwhile, in the building that once housed the Tribuna newsroom, boxed-up computers sit waiting to be sold, offices stay empty and printing presses stand idle. Only a TV studio is still active.

González's shooting of his weekly political commentary video show continues. And so do the lawsuits from government officials against journalists.

Follow AP’s Latin America coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

Computer equipment sits idle in the former newsroom of the independent newspaper Tribuna that closed two years prior in Campeche, Mexico, Thursday, Sept. 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Martin Zetina)

Photographs lie in the former newsroom of the independent newspaper Tribuna that closed two years prior in Campeche, Mexico, Thursday, Sept. 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Martin Zetina)

A person reads a newspaper at a market in Campeche, Mexico, Thursday, Sept. 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Martin Zetina)

The last edition of the independent newspaper Tribuna, which closed on Jan. 18, 2024, in Campeche, Mexico, Thursday, Sept. 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Martin Zetina)

Jorge Luis González, former director of the independent newspaper Tribuna, left, and journalist Lorenzo Chim Caamal, host the program Expediente in Campeche, Mexico, Thursday, Sept. 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Martin Zetina)

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Seoul has called for an official apology from Ukraine after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy revealed what it says was supposed to be a secret transfer of two North Korean prisoners of war to South Korea.

Zelenskyy told the U.N. General Assembly last week that Ukraine had recently sent the men to South Korea, after capturing them on a Ukraine-Russia battlefield in early 2025. The two are among thousands of North Korean soldiers sent to support Russia’s war against Ukraine.

South Korean President Lee Jae Myung quickly accused Ukraine of violating a nondisclosure agreement about the transfer. Ukraine denied making such a deal.

Late Sunday, Seong Ghi-hong, a senior presidential adviser for Lee on public relations, expressed “strong regret” over Ukraine’s latest actions and demanded an official apology and explanation.

The South Korean Foreign Ministry on Monday summoned Ukraine’s ambassador to Seoul, Andrii Vieshkin, to protest what it described as Kyiv’s “unilateral disclosure” of the prisoners’ transfer and its false denial that the two countries had agreed to keep the matter confidential.

Vieshkin said he would convey Seoul’s position to his government, the ministry said in a statement. Repeated calls to Ukraine’s Embassy in Seoul seeking comment were unanswered.

Seong said that Ukraine’s “false” denial of the nondisclosure agreement was “an act that seriously undermines trust between the two governments and causes significant damage to friendly relations between the two countries.”

Seong said the agreement was reached because Seoul was concerned about the safety of the North Korean soldiers and their relatives in the North while Kyiv worried about possible domestic criticism for forfeiting an opportunity to exchange them for Ukrainian soldiers held in Russia.

While still in Ukraine, the two soldiers said in media interviews that they wanted to resettle in South Korea.

Seoul had called on Ukraine not to send them back to North Korea, where they could face persecution. The South legally regards the North as part of its territory and has a policy of accepting and financially supporting North Korean defectors.

More than 34,000 North Koreans have fled to South Korea since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War, mostly in the last three decades. Most were female civilians from the North’s poorer northern provinces. Defections by soldiers are uncommon.

In his U.N. speech, Zelenskyy didn't provide details about the transfer, but said that “one of them, when he realized he was going to ​be taken prisoner, tried to kill himself and he was shocked that ​fate didn’t let him die. This is how they raise people in the North.”

Some experts say Zelenskyy likely decided to expose the danger of North Korean involvement in the war as a way to attract bigger Western assistance.

Meanwhile, South Korea's liberal government worried that news of the transfer could trigger an angry response from the North and hurt efforts to resume diplomacy between Pyongyang and Washington.

A growing arms exporter with a well-equipped and U.S.-backed military, South Korea has provided humanitarian aid and other support to Ukraine while joining U.S.-led economic sanctions against Russia since its invasion in 2022.

However, Seoul has resisted calls by Kyiv and NATO to provide direct military support to Ukraine in line with a long-standing policy of not supplying weapons to countries actively engaged in conflict.

North Korea and Russia confirmed in April 2025 that their soldiers fought together to repel a Ukrainian incursion into Russia’s Kursk border region. South Korea, the United States and others say North Korea has also supplied artillery, ammunition and missiles to Russia in return for economic and military assistance.

South Korea’s intelligence service estimated last year that North Korea sent about 15,000 troops and 2,000 of them were killed.

Expanding cooperation with Russia has helped North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Un, push back against U.S.-led pressure and more assertively accelerate a nuclear weapons program. Last month, U.S. President Donald Trump scaled back a military drill with South Korea in an apparent bid to restart diplomacy with Kim, but North Korea has suggested the step wasn't enough to convince it to return to talks.

Associated Press writer Kim Tong-hyung contributed to this report.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks during the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly at United Nations headquarters, Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)