In 2015, Mexico saw one attack against journalists every 22 hours, making that year the most violent for the country’s press since 2009, according to an annual report from freedom of expression organization Article 19 Mexico. This violence, along with the pervasive impunity that follows, an unresponsive state, weak democracy and inaccessible protective agencies, have created a culture of fear among the country's journalists, the report said.
Almost 17 years after the murder of Colombian journalist and humorist Jaime Garzón, one of the country’s head prosecutors finally identified the killing as a crime of the state due to the participation of members of the Army and the defunct department of intelligence (known as DAS) along with a criminal organization.
A Salvadoran communication worker's recent murder is directly linked to his work, according to communications groups that have called on the government for a thorough investigation of the crime and protection for media workers.
The former mayor of Silao (in the state of Guanajuato, Mexico), Enrique Benjamín Solís Arzola, was arrested on March 11 for alleged involvement in the attack against journalist Karla Silva from newspaper El Heraldo de León in 2014. After a long hearing, the local court ordered Solís to be taken into custody for two months, a period in which to conclude the investigation against him.
According to witnesses, two people on a motorcycle fired eight shots at a car parked in the garage of Brazilian journalist Kenedy Salomé Lenk in the early morning hours of March 10, reported newspaper O Globo. The journalist, his wife and daughter were asleep inside the house at the time.
Brazilian radio host João Valdecir de Borba, known as Valdão, was killed on March 10 while working in the studios of Rádio Difusora AM in São Jorge do Oeste, southwestern Paraná state.
The Attorney General of the Public Prosecutor's Office of Guatemala decided to transfer the cases of two journalists murdered in 2015 to the Special Prosecutor Against Impunity (FECI for its initials in Spanish).
Hundreds of Argentinian press and media workers gathered in the streets of Buenos Aires on March 3 to protest mass layoffs affecting their industry, according to news portal La Izquierda Diario.
Mexico is experiencing a “serious human rights crisis,” according to the recent report “Situation of Human Rights in Mexico” from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). According to the organization, the high rates of forced disappearances, torture, citizen insecurity, restricted access to justice and impunity generate special concern.
About 96 percent of the murders of journalists and other media workers in Honduras remain in impunity, according to figures received by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) that recently published the report “Situation of Human Rights in Honduras.”
A municipal policeman has been arrested as a suspect for the Jan. 21 murder of Oaxaca correspondent Marcos Hernández Bautista, the first of four journalists killed in Mexico this year.
The body of politician and journalist Moisés Dagdug Lutzow, who had been threatened for his work, was found inside his home in Villahermosa, Tabasco, in southeastern Mexico, on Feb. 20. He had been stabbed multiple times.