By Ingrid Bachmann
Luis Horacio Nájera, who won asylum in Canada two years ago, was honored last week in Toronto by Canadian Journalists for Free Expression, for his reporting in the violent border city Ciudad Juárez. His Mexican colleague Emilio Gutiérrez Soto and three journalists from Cameroon were also awarded prizes, The Toronto Star reports.
Nájera sought refuge in Vancouver in 2008 after receiving threats for his reports about abuses committed by the Mexican army. “The threats were not just against me, but my family,” he told the Star. "That was too much. I knew I had no right to go on putting them at risk.” (Najéra describes his work in this video by the Committee to Protect Journalists.)
Gutiérrez remains under house arrest while waiting for a decision on his asylum petition to the United States the EFE news agency explains. The former reporter for El Diario de Juárez fled to Texas and sought asylum in 2008 for fear of being killed by the military over his reporting on their anti-drug operations.
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.
