Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Photo: Google

By THE PULSE NEWS MEXICO STAFF

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) on Thursday, March 10, called members of the European Parliament (EP) “sheep” and “interventionists” after that body, the only directly elected entity within the European Union (EU), called on him earlier in the day to provide protection to journalists and to stop using the “populist rhetoric” that implicitly sanctions attacks against the media.

Defiant as ever against anyone or any organization — national or otherwise — that dares to question his callous verbal rampages against journalists, AMLO reiterated his condemnation of the EP on Friday, March 11.

“Mexico is a free, independent and sovereign country,” López Obrador said, telling the European parliamentarians “to evolve” because they are “backward” in their thinking.

“Evolve, leave behind your interventionist mania disguised as good intentions,” he said, speaking this time from Tapachula, Chiapas.

“You are not the world government.”

López Obrador went on to quote Mexico’s revolutionary president, Benito Juárez, telling the Europeans to “respect the rights of others” (a policy he has yet to apply when dealing with the Mexican press).

AMLO said that because the European parliamentarians were “conservatives, with a colonialist mentality,” he “could not remain silent” in the face of their condemnation of his treatment of the press.

“These European legislators — all very conservative, with a colonialist mentality — have approved a resolution condemning the government of Mexico,” he said.

“In the past, Mexico had rulers with no moral authority, so they had to remain silent. But I cannot accept that anyone disrespects Mexico’s legal and legitimately constituted authorities.”

AMLO said that he had written a formal letter to the European Parliament in which he again called them “sheep” and “interventionists.”

He said that he considered the resolution of the European Parliament, in which its members called on Mexico to guarantee the protection of journalists and human rights defenders, to be “slanderous.”

AMLO did not, however, respond directly to the fact that the legislators had pointed out that Mexico is the most dangerous non-warring country in the world for journalists, noting that just this year five reporters have been murdered.

The president said that the European parliamentarians were “uninformed” and making false statements.

López Obrador said that while it was “unfortunate” that five Mexican journalists have so far lost their lives this year, in four of the cases there have been suspected perpetrators detained.