Award-winning Mexican journalist and now whistleblower Karla Berenice García Ramírez, who writes under the penname Karla Lottini, fears for the safety of herself and her family – including her two young Canadian born daughters – as she awaits deportation orders. In a packed press conference on Thursday January 19, 2012 she made the following statement to the press:

I am here, in Canada, in front of you, Canadian, Latin American, and Multicultural journalists. I want to tell you that if I’ll be forced back to Mexico, my life and my family’s lives are at risk: we can be killed, harassed and even go to jail “for moral damage”.

Why? Because I had the “bad luck” to discover corruption in the most important cultural institution within the federal government that controls 49 cultural institutions and hundreds of programs in the whole country.

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By: Tamsyn Burgmann, The Canadian Press Posted: 01/19/2012 1:19 PM

VANCOUVER – Her voice is strained as Karla Ramirez recounts seeing the butt of a gun, a man telling her she’d better be careful or her body might turn up in an empty lot. Yet she proceeds to name names, defiantly alleging corruption in the highest echelons of a Mexican government ministry that she says she unearthed while working there as a journalist. “Names are here,” she said, thumbing through her book The Talent of Charlatans, at a news conference Thursday.

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‘Echar raíces’ – to put down roots. That’s exactly what a threatened Mexican journalist did since fleeing to Surrey with her family. In this VO exclusive, Karla Berenice García Ramírez — pen name Lottini –tells the story of her fight to stay.
David P. Ball Posted: Jan 19th, 2012 Vancouver Observer

When she first received a death threat for exposing Mexico’s government corruption, award-winning journalist Karla Lottini’s first thought was to protect her family. “’How are are you, my queen?’” she recounts her assailant saying in 2003. “’If you don’t stop writing about this, your body could end up being in an empty lot – or even worse, someone in your family.’ “I think it’s worse if you have daughters in your family. I’m not afraid if someone cuts my head off – I got a call in 2008, saying I would have my arms cut off. But my daughters…” The 38-year-old journalist and Vancouver radio broadcaster – who lives in Surrey with her husband César Casso and two small children – invited the Vancouver Observer into her home for an exclusive interview.

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CBC News Posted: Jan 19, 2012 9:13 PM PT

A Mexican journalist is fighting to stay in Canada says she is worried about the safety of her family and herself if she’s deported. Karla Ramirez fled from Mexico to B.C. in 2008 after trying to uncover suspected corruption inside the Mexican government’s cultural affairs department, and she has written a book about what she discovered in her investigation. Ramirez, 38, says she and her family have been threatened and claims powerful officials in the Mexican government are trying to silence her.

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By Yolande Cole, January 19, 2012, Georgia Straight

A Mexican journalist facing deportation from Canada says she fears for the safety of herself and her family if she’s forced to return to her home country. Karla Berenice Garcίa Ramίrez fled to Canada with her husband in 2008 after she received death threats for going public with allegations of corruption within the Mexican government ministry of the National Council for Culture and Arts. Since she published a book in March 2011 detailing corruption she’d uncovered while working for the ministry, Ramίrez and family members in Mexico have received increased death threats.

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