Between 1995 and August 2010, 258 journalists were killed — or kidnapped and assumed killed — in Latin America, but only 59 of those cases have been successfully prosecuted. These numbers from the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) back up a new analysis from journalist Tyler Bridges who in his report referred to the “worst wave of violence against journalists ever in Latin America." This is the setting which prompted IAPA to develop the Impunity Project.
The Mexican government, media outlets on both sides of the border, and press organizations must do more to end danger faced by the press on Mexico’s northern border from drug-trafficking violence and impunity.
Thirty years after Guatemalan journalist, writer and activist Alaíde Foppa was kidnapped, her family and journalism and human rights organizations on Wednesday, Nov. 24, 2010, went before Guatemala's Supreme Court to demand authorities investigate what happened to Foppa, according to IFEX. The family presented a statement to the court to coincide with the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women on Nov. 25.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has demanded a “thorough investigation” into the killing of crime reporter Carlos Guajardo to determine if members of the army shot him.
Member countries of the UN Human Rights Council criticized Honduras and sought more information about human right violations since the coup that unseated President Manuel Zelaya, and about the killings of nine journalists in 2010, Inter Press Service reports. (See this earlier story in English).
During President Felipe Calderón’s trip to the violent border city across from El Paso, Texas, a group of journalists from Ciudad Juárez called on the president to solve the killings of their colleagues, EFE and the International Press Institute report.
Through its You Tube channel, the Inter American Press Association has launched a series of videos highlighting its international campaign to counter violence against the press in countries such as Mexico, Honduras, and Colombia.
With the violence unleashed by drug cartels profoundly impacting Mexico, both foreign and local journalists are trying to figure out how to cover a war of a different kind, according to a panel presented in front of more than 200 people at the University of Texas at Austin on Thursday, Oct. 7.
The National Commission for Human Rights (CNDH) published a guide with measures for protecting journalists at risk and countering the violence against the press, reported EFE and La Jornada.
Peruvian writer and failed presidential candidate Mario Vargas Llosa has won the 2010 Nobel Prize for Literature for his "cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individuals' resistance, revolt and defeat," reported the Christian Science Monitor and Los Angeles Times.
A prosecutor has opened an investigation into two former congressmen, Francisco Ferney Tapasco and his son Dixon Ferney Tapasco Triviño, for their alleged role in the death of Orlando Sierra, a journalist and editor at La Patria newspaper, EFE and RCN Radio report.
In what has been characterized as a “blow to the media,” the Supreme Court of Justice of El Salvador declared unconstitutional a section of the penal code that exempted media, reporters, editors and owners from legal responsibility for defamation. According to the ruling, the law violated the principle of equality, reported El Mundo and El Faro.