Reporters Without Borders asked Honduran authorities to immediately provide protection for the independent reporter Karla Zelaya, who has received death threats and was recently kidnapped and tortured during an interrogation about her work, according to the organization.
Karla Zelaya is an independent reporter and spokeswoman for the Unified Peasant Movement of Aguán (MUCA in Spanish) a group involved in an on-going agrarian conflict between peasants and landowners. Since August, the reporter has received death threats and warnings following the killings of a MUCA lawyer and a prosecutor involved with the case. Since September, Amnesty International has requested protection for the reporter but the Honduran authorities have ignored the plea.
After the threats, the reporter fled to the capital, Tegucigalpa, under the protection of the Committee of Relatives of the Disappeared in Honduras, according to the newspaper La Tribuna.
Note from the editor: This story was originally published by the Knight Center’s blog Journalism in the Americas, the predecessor of LatAm Journalism Review.
