The United Nations Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression said he would ask the Honduran government permission to investigate the killings of 16 journalists in the Central American country since the June 2009 coup d'état, reported the news agency EFE.
Gunmen attacked journalist Edgardo Antonio Escoto Amador, known as "Washo," and stole his laptop containing valuable information, reported the organization C-Libre Honduras.
Journalist Mario Castro Rodríguez, director of the Globo TV news program "The scourge of corruption" in Honduras, claims to have received death threats via text messages, according to the Press and Society Institute.
A journalist was killed in Honduras the night of Thursday, Sept. 8, in Puerto Cortés, in the northern part of the country, according to the news agency AFP.
The former mayor of Copán Ruinas, a Honduran city on the border with Guatemala, received death threats from drug traffickers who believe he acted as a source for the digital newspaper El Faro in El Salvador, El Faro reported.
Carlos Alberto Medina Polanco, brother of killed Honduran journalist Héctor Fransico Medina Polanco and himself a journalist, claimed he has been receiving death threats in San Pedro Sula, reported the organization C-Libre.
A Honduran judge issued arrest warrants for a journalist and 16 environmental leaders for allegedly opposing a forest management plan in the town of El Porvenir, in central Honduras.
Two journalists from Canal 36, an affiliate of Cholusat Sur, received text message death threats after reporting on evidence of alleged misconduct by the Catholic Church in Honduras, El Libertador 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.
The website for the Honduran newspaper El Libertador was attacked by hackers on June 28, reported IFEX. This is the second time the newspaper has been subject to digital sabotage since the 2009 Honduran coup, which El Libertador opposed.
After the wave of journalist killings in Honduras in 2010 that prompted President Porfirio Lobo to ask the U.S. FBI for help, so far in 2011 three journalists have been killed. Adán Benítez, veteran host and journalist who worked for more than 16 years in radio and television, was shot to death on his way home in the city of La Ceiba on Monday, July 4, reported La Prensa Gráfica.
Reporters Without Borders and the World Association of Community Radios for Latin America and the Caribbean (AMARC-ALC in Spanish) expressed their concern and the readmittance without conditions of Honduras to the Organization of American States (OAS), from which the country has been suspended after the June 2009 coup, reported Hora Cero.