Saying "No to Silence": Hear Murdered Mexican Journalist Javier Valdez in His Own Words

"Let them kill us all, if that is the death sentence for reporting this hell. No to silence." Those are the words of award-winning Mexican reporter Javier Valdez, after one of his colleagues, Miroslava Breach, was assassinated in late March. On Monday, Valdez was also assassinated, dragged out of his car and shot 12 times, less than a block from the office of Ríodoce, the newspaper he co-founded in the Mexican state of Sinaloa. The killing of Valdez, who wrote for the prominent newspaper La Jornada, has sparked widespread outrage across Mexico. On Tuesday, as hundreds of people gathered for Valdez’s funeral in Culiacán, Sinaloa, hundreds more protested outside the Interior Ministry in Mexico City. Multiple Mexican digital media outlets also went on a 24-hour strike, refusing to publish anything but a black banner with the names of the journalists assassinated in Mexico so far this year: Cecilio Pineda, Maximino Rodríguez, Ricardo Monlui, Filiberto Álvarez, Miroslava Breach and Javier Valdez. We air Valdez’s 2011 speech when he came to New York to receive the International Press Freedom Award from the Committee to Protect Journalists.