The Special Prosecutor’s Office for the Attention of Crimes Committed against Freedom of Expression (Feadle) of Mexico, with the help of Federal Police, carried out an arrest warrant against Juan Francisco “N,” “for his probable participation in the murder of journalist Javier Valdez Cárdenas, on May 15, 2017.”
The names of two journalists from Mexico and another from Colombia will be added to the Journalists Memorial at the Washington, D.C.-based Newseum.
While reporters don helmets to cover violent protests in Nicaragua, human rights and press organizations are calling on the international community to pay attention to attacks on journalists and news media amidst protests against the government of President Daniel Ortega.
Mexican journalist Héctor González Antonio was found dead on May 29 in Ciudad Victoria, capital of the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, according to local authorities.
The lawyer for Mexican reporter Emilio Gutiérrez Soto, who has been in a detention center in El Paso, Texas since December 2017, says he has new evidence to convince the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to grant the journalist asylum. The U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) ordered a new asylum petition hearing for Gutiérrez […]
During the highly criticized Venezuelan presidential elections on May 20, monitors of freedom of expression recorded physical attacks on journalists as well as intimidation. It’s more of the same for a community of journalists that has been threatened physically, in the courts and online while covering growing political and societal unrest in recent years.
Mexican authorities arrested Arturo Quintina, known as “El 80,” an alleged drug trafficker suspected of ordering the March 2017 murder of journalist Miroslava Breach, according to El País.
The call for justice for Mexico’s journalists will not stop, despite years of violence and impunity that plagues the profession in that Latin American country. To mark the one-year anniversary of the murder of Sinaloa-based reporter Javier Valdez, colleagues and friends carried out a National Day of Protest on social media and in person, calling for his killers to be brought to justice and for an end to violence against the journalists who uncover things that many would prefer were kept secret.
Mexican journalist Juan Carlos Huerta was killed in Tabasco on the morning of May 15 in what appears to be a targeted hit. His death comes on the one-year anniversary of the murder of journalist Javier Valdez, calling attention to the grave violence being faced by the Mexican press.
Two suspects in the murder of Nicaraguan journalist Ángel Gahona were sent to prison on May 8 after an initial hearing before a district judge in Managua, the country’s capital, La Prensa reported. However, the journalist’s family as well as the detainees and other civil society organizations, are protesting the accusation made by the public prosecutor’s office, saying it is a strategy of the authorities to avoid accusing the real perpetrators.
In Brazil in 2017 there were at least 27 serious violations against communicators, according to a report released on May 3 by the Brazilian branch of international organization Article 19, which is dedicated to the defense of freedom of expression. The information compiled by the NGO annually since 2012 highlights continuing trends in the country: politicians are the main suspects of ordering or carrying out violations; small cities, with up to 100,000 inhabitants, are the main sites of these violations; and radio broadcasters and bloggers are the main victims of the attacks.
The film crew behind the latest documentary looking at violence against journalists in Mexico spent three years (2015-2017) working on the project. Three years which they say were the bloodiest for the country's press.