Civil servants who do not comply with the Law on Access to Information (LAI) in Brazil are not punished, according to a recent report from Article 19 Brazil, an NGO that defends freedom of expression and the right to information. The report was launched in celebration of the five-year law, which became effective on May 16.
When Javier Valdez’s colleague Miroslava Breach was killed in Chihuahua on March 23 of this year, Valdez wrote on Twitter, “No Al Silencio” (No to Silence), a rejection of censorship and violence against the press in his country. Following his own murder, Valdez's colleagues have picked up those words to continue the fight.
Following the call of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) to take stricter measures to end impunity in violence against journalists, the president of that country, Enrique Peña Nieto, promised to make the issue one of the priorities of what remains of his administration.
Mexico is one of the deadliest countries to practice journalism. This has been repeated in recent years by different organizations that defend freedom of the press both in the country and abroad.
From 2001 to the present, 69 media professionals in Honduras have died in violent circumstances, and people have been sentenced in only six of those cases. That is, 91 percent of the deaths remains in impunity, according to a report by the country’s National Commission of Human Rights (CONADEH for its acronym in Spanish).
A Guatemalan congressman was named by the country’s authorities as the alleged mastermind of the March 10, 2015 murder of journalist Danilo Efraín Zapón López, according to the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG for its acronym in Spanish).
Almost 15 years to the day when Colombian journalist Orlando Sierra was fatally shot, another of the men involved in that crime has been deported back to Colombia.
For decades, Colombian journalism has been a direct victim of the violence generated by the country’s armed conflict that started more than 50 years ago. The signing of the new peace agreement with the FARC guerrillas, endorsed by the country’s Congress on Nov. 30, could mean the end of one of the causes of violent censorship for journalists in Colombia.
The Mexican state of Veracruz has proven to be one of the most dangerous places in the world for the press with 17 journalist homicides in the last six years. This year alone, three journalists have been killed in the state.
November 2, the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists, first declared by the United Nations in 2013, coincides with the Day of the Dead, a cultural and religious event widely celebrated in Mexico.