Although Mexico is known as one of the deadliest countries in the world for journalists, the threat to media professionals in the country is not just physical. In many cases, the enemies of freedom of expression and of the press resort not to arms, but to the courts, in an attempt to silence journalistic coverage that goes against their interests.
Ecuador’s Organic Law of Communication (LOC, for its initials in Spanish), considered by press freedom organizations as the most repressive law of the continent, could be reformed before the end of 2018.
The Protection Mechanism for Human Rights Defenders and Journalists will run out of funding at the end of September, mobilizing press advocates to demand the federal government guarantee resources for the program to continue.
Guatemalan newspaper elPeriódico has been shutdown by a new wave of cyberattacks. The site reported attacks to its server since the early morning hours of Aug. 29 in what it says is the 15th such assault on its site.
News that Carlos Pastora, general manager of Canal 10 of Nicaragua, sought refuge in the Honduran embassy in Managua awoke rumors of alleged persecution by the government of Daniel Ortega against the channel.
During the first two weeks of August of this year, independent news sites Armando.info and El Pitazo were blocked intermittently on the internet by state and private operators, according to a study conducted by Venezuela’s Press and Society Institute (IPYS, for its initials in Spanish).
Press freedom organizations are calling attention to the case of independent Cuban journalist Serafín Morán Santiago who was detained in the U.S. after arriving to seek asylum in the country.
Since Miguel Díaz-Canel became President of Cuba in April 2018, “repression against journalists is greater,” José Antonio Fornaris, president of Cuba’s Pro Press Freedom Association (APLP, for its initials in Spanish), told the Knight Center.
A court order is preventing four Venezuelan journalists from Armando.info, three of them founders of the site, from leaving the country. The 11th Trial Court of the Metropolitan Area of Caracas issued the measure at the request of the Colombian businessman Alex Nain Saab Morán, reported site Runrun.es.
The case of Chilean journalist Javier Ignacio Rebolledo Escobar, who faces a possible prison sentence for injuria (defamation), may have negative effects on press freedom in the South American country.
Nicaraguan press workers organized a sit-in in Managua as detentions of and attacks on journalists continue, with two detentions in the past week.
Peruvian journalist Gustavo Gorriti, director of IDL-Reporteros, and his colleague and cofounder Romina Mella, presented a constitutional complaint for protection before the Constitutional Court of the Superior Court of Justice of Lima, for the continuous and aggressive demands toward their news site.