The Spanish journalist Francisco Gómez Nadal was arrested in Panama City while covering a demonstration organized by indigenous groups protesting mining reforms they believe would harm the environment, according to the Latin American Herald Tribune.
A judge absolved Colombian journalist Claudia López of libel, after accusations leveled against her by ex-President Ernesto Samper (1994-98) prompted by a column in which she suggested Samper was involved in a pair of homicides, reported RCN Radio.
2010 was a year plagued by setbacks for press freedom and threats to journalists worldwide, according to Reporters without Borders’ (RSF) Spanish-language report titled “Freedom of the Press Report Worldwide in 2010.”
Cuban dissident journalist Iván Hernández was freed from prison Saturday, Feb. 18, after spending eight years in jail. His release comes in the latest round of political prisoners being freed, which started earlier this month.
Responding to public outcry, the government of Mato Grosso do Sul state in Brazil plans to remove access restrictions to the site of the online newspaper Midiamax, which was blocked on public computers connected to the system of the Superintendency of Information Management, Midiamax reports.
Antônio Carlos Almeida Campelo, a judge in Brazil’s 4th Federal Civil Court in the northern state of Pará, issued an injunction blocking journalist Lúcio Flávio Pinto from publishing any information about a case against several business people in the state, Diário Online reports.
Mexican journalist Carlos Loret de Mola, the anchor of a news show on Televisa, was held for eight hours upon his arrival to Cairo, first by a group of civilian “vigilantes” and later by the army, which confiscated his cell phone, El Universal reports.
El Nuevo Diario newspaper journalist Luis Galeano told the police and several human rights groups that he received a phone call and a letter warning him that he would be killed, Notimex reports.
Carlos Santos, a journalist in Mossoró in the northeastern state of Rio Grande do Norte, was convicted to four months in prison for three blog posts that the city’s mayor found offensive, Mossoró Notícias reports. For each piece, he was sentenced to one month and ten days in prison and is required to donate approximately a total of $3,600 fines to charity.
The site Midiamax, a digital newspaper in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, said in a message sent to the Brazilian Press Association (ABI in Portuguese) that it is being censored by the state government. According to Midiamax, access to its site is blocked on public computers connected to the system of the Superintendency of Information Management.
Journalists and media outlets in the western Peruvian city of Chimbote have joined to protest the president of the Ancash region, who they say is persecuting and harassing reporters who have criticized his government, CPN Radio reports.
In a climate of increasing hostility to freedom of expression in Colombia, five journalists received death threats from a paramilitary group, which warned that the time had arrived to “exterminate and annihilate all those people and organizations that pose as human rights defenders,” La Vanguardia and El País Vallenato report.