The indigenous leader and former director of the radio station La Voz de Arutam, José Acacho, was arrested and accused of sabotage and terrorism for allegedly using the station to incite anti-government protests, Fundamedios reports via IFEX. During the 2009 demonstrations, one teacher was killed and 40 soldiers were wounded.
Members of the Brazilian media who traveled to Egypt to cover the protests for and against President Hosni Mubarak have suffered various types of harassment at the hands of the police, including hotel room raids, equipment confiscation, and deportation.
Argentine journalist Rafael Morán, who spent four and a half months in prison during the dictatorship (1976-1983) for writing about a disappeared dissident, testified in Mendoza about crimes against humanity by the military, Clarin reports.
Radio Faluma Bimetu/Coco Dulce, a station serving the Afro-Caribbean Garifuna community in the Honduran coastal city of Triunfo de la Cruz, returned to the air after a month of threats, tension, and hostility, reports Reporters without Borders (RSF).
Journalist Maritânia Forlin has been formally indicted for her alleged role in trading police information for exclusives with drug traffickers, Terra reports. She was one of 25 individuals in Paraná state indicted for various crimes, including misrepresentation and criminal conspiracy, Gazeta do Povo explains.
A Chilean journalist was arrested by police while covering a protest against the increase in public transportation fares in the capital city of Santiago, according to Terra.
Freelance reporter Solly Boussidan, who was arrested Jan. 28 for allegedly working without proper accreditation, was deported Feb. 1, O Globo reports. He was sent to the nearby country of Abkhazia.
Dissident Cuban journalist Julio César Gálvez, who was freed in July 2010 by Cuba after seven years in prison, complained that the living conditions of his exile in Spain are not what he was promised.
Dominican Republic journalist Francisco Frías, the director of Cabrera FM and the digital newspaper Prensa Libre Nagua, was shot by the police while covering a funeral, Terra reports.
The Supreme Court of Peru invalidated a lower court ruling which cleared a former mayor accused of killing a journalist in 2004, La República reports. Luiza Valdez, ex mayor of Coronel Portillo, will be tried again for allegedly masterminding the murder of journalist Alberto Rivera Fernández.
El Salvador’s Human Rights ombudsman called on the police and Attorney General to open an investigation into the series of threats received by journalists at Radio Victoria, in the central department of Cabañas, La Prensa Gráfica reports.
As violence from the bloody drug war increases and the dead fill morgues and line mass graves in Mexico, two journalists have each launched books that seek to describe the horrors of the conflict and unravel the corruption that is hidden behind it.