A man suspected of killing political journalist Auro Ida was arrested by the police July 25 in the neighborhood of Cuiabá, Mato Grosso where the crime occurred, G1 reports. Soon after, the 19-year-old man was released by the police when the victim’s girlfriend – the principal witness to the crime – failed to recognize him, Terra explains. The police say he is still under investigation.
Forty years after journalist Luis Eduardo Merlino was arrested, tortured, and killed during Brazil’s military dictatorship (1964-1985), retired Army Colonel Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra is being tried for his alleged role in the crime, Correio do Brasil reports.
Journalist Yolanda Orda, who had been missing for 48 hours, was found dead in Veracruz, Mexico, July 26, the Associated Press reports. Ordaz, who covered police issues for Notiver – one of the most important dailies in the region – is the second journalist from the paper to be killed in the last five weeks and the seventh Mexican journalist killed in 2011.
While violence against the press in Paraguay is nowhere near the levels found in Mexico, Honduras, or Colombia, journalists in the country have little support and face daily risks, especially those in border regions controlled by international smuggling gangs, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) writes in its report “Journalists alone facing trafficking."
A bill in Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies would require media companies to provide life and disability insurance for journalists working in dangerous areas, Agência Câmara reports.
Journalist Jaime Quispe, the director of Jornada newspaper in Ayacucho, Peru, received a death threat the same day he published an article about political pressure to release a regional politician’s imprisoned brother, whom he accused of being a member of a blackmail gang, the Press and Society Institute (IPYS) reports.
Political journalist Auro Ida, 53, was shot to death the morning of July 22 in front of his girlfriend’s house in Cuiabá, Mato Grosso, G1 reports.
In front of a police station in São José do Rio Preto, São Paulo, two Brazilian journalists were attacked while attempting to interview a doctor under investigation for the death of a university student, Diário Web reports.
On July 14, journalist Fábio Roberto was attacked as he left the offices of Radio Bahiana in Ilhéus, Bahia, where he hosts an opinion show on which he often airs corruption allegations, Vi o Mundo reports.
The director of the Honduran station Radio Joconguera, Nery Orellana, was shot to death Thursday, July 14, on a road in the Honduran town of Candelaria, on the border with El Salvador, reported La Prensa. Orellana, 26 years old, is the fourth journalist killed in Honduras this year, after the killings of journalists Adán Benítez, Francisco Medina Polanco, and Luis Mendoza, owner of television station Canal 24.
Journalist Cristina Guimarães, who, along with Tim Lopes, won the Esso Journalism Prize for the series "Drug Fair," accused Brazil's TV Globo of not adequately protecting Lopes, who was killed in 2002 after receiving threats from drug traffickers in Río de Janeiro, reported the newspaper Jornal do Brasil.
Emilio Gutiérrez, a Mexican journalist seeking asylum in the United States after fleeing the drug-related violence in the northern region of the country, has petitioned the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) of the Organization of American States (OAS) to investigate and rule on the inability of the Mexican government to protect the rights of journalists who have been threatened by the military since President Felipe Calderón began his anti-drug war in 2006, reported El Diario in El Paso, Texas.