A former deputy police chief accused of ordering the kidnapping and killing of Mexican journalist Moisés Sánchez Cerezo was released from prison after a federal judge granted him amparo, an action to protect an individual’s constitutional rights.
The case of Colombian journalist Nelson Carvajal, murdered on April 16, 1998, was submitted to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights on October 22 by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).
The International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists (IDEI), on Nov. 2, was marked by events all over the world. At the United Nations headquarters in New York City, a panel discussion concluded that it is time for the international community to take more concrete actions to protect journalists and prosecute those who commit crimes against them.
Today, UNESCO hosts the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists (IDEI), aiming to prompt governments around the world to take stronger actions towards condemning and prosecuting those who commit crimes against journalists. Press advocates explain that the death of journalists is not only an industry-related problem but a threat to democratic society as a whole.
In the context of high levels of violence against journalists in Brazil, which already account for four murders this year, freedom of the press defenders came together around a project that seeks to curb impunity in these crimes. The Brazilian Press Association (ABI for its acronym in Portuguese) and the National Federation of Journalists (Fenaj for its acronym in Portuguese) launched "SOS Journalist", a platform for journalists to denounce aggressions and media abuses related to their professional practice, and to ask for and receive state protection.
A white plaque near Villa Ygatimí, about 26 miles from the Paraguayan border with Brazil, commemorates a journalist and an assistant killed while driving on a dirt highway there a year earlier.
Unsolved murders, violent government repression, oppressive anti-media laws and the ever-increasing ties between big money and big government were among the issues of debate at the 71st General Assembly of the Inter-American Press Association (IAPA).
Colombia dropped off the Committee to Protect Journalist’s (CPJ) 2015 Global Impunity Index that was released Oct. 8, leaving Mexico and Brazil as the sole Latin American countries in the list of the top 14 countries where murderers of journalists “go free.”
When Miguel Ángel López Solana received the news on August 1 that fellow journalist Rubén Espinosa had been murdered in Mexico City, the entire nightmare that had forced him to escape from Veracruz four years earlier came back to him.
In the first six months of 2015 alone, there were 59 documented attacks against journalists in Guatemala, according to a report released last week by the Observatory for Journalists of the Center for Informative Reports about Guatemala (CERIGUA for its acronym in Spanish).
Rodrigo Neto, a journalist and radio host from Ipatinga, Minas Gerais, denounced injustices and held police accountable.
Former Colombian legislator and politician Ferney Tapasco has been sentenced to 36 years in prison for being the mastermind of the 2002 murder of La Patria deputy editor Orlando Sierra who was killed because of his work.