By Ingrid Bachmann
Public Security Minister Oscar Álvarez submitted a report to congress this week about the deaths of 10 Honduran media workers, seven of whom were killed this year, El Heraldo reports.
The authorities haven’t released any details from the document, which has been classified as confidential to not “hinder the investigations,” but Álvarez has insisted that the crimes were not motivated by politics or ideology, La Tribuna adds. However, a recent Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) delegation highlighted a “serious climate of self-censorship” among the country’s media workers. See the IACHR press release in English here.
In addition to the radio announcer and six journalists who have been killed this year, several Honduran media workers have been threatened. Most recently, Jessica Johana Pavón Osorto, a news presenter in Tegucigalpa for Channel 6, reported receiving text message death threats on her cell phone, C-Libre reports via IFEX.
Messages like “your time will come” and “we’ll blow your head off” led the 26-year-old journalist to report the case to the police, who have assigned an officer to accompany her to and from work, El Tiempo explains.
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.
