Brazilian journalist Gleydson Carvalho died Thursday after two men fatally shot him at his radio studio while he was on air.
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).
After fracturing her jaw with a single stroke, Susana Morazán’s aggressors made a threat: “stop talking bad about the government.” The event took place on Jan. 19, when two men riding motorcycles intercepted the TV Azteca Guatemala host while she was driving her car, according to Prensa Libre.
With a total of 579 violations and 350 cases, 2014 was the “worst year” on record in terms “guarantees to the human right to freedom of expression” in Venezuela, according to non-governmental organization Espacio Público. The number of violations and cases, they said, are the highest they have been in the past 20 years.
In Brazil and Mexico, ranked seventh and eleventh by the Committee to Protect Journalists as the countries with the highest levels of impunity in the murder of journalists, two advocacy groups are mapping these attacks in an effort to increase their security.
The Mexican news site SinEmbargo has demanded that authorities investigate a series of attacks, threats, and defamatory acts that have targeted the publication regularly since Oct. 8, shortly after the disappearance of 43 students in Ayotzinapa in the state of Guerrero.
When a group of men entered the Silao offices of El Heraldo de Leon in September and threatened and beat reporter Karla Silva, the case became a rallying point for the passage of a protection law for journalists in the state of Guanajuato.
Mexican activist Atilano Román Tirado was killed on Monday while giving a live radio broadcast in Mazatlan in the state of Sinaloa. Listeners of Román Tirado’s weekly radio show reported hearing gunshots after intruders entered the station and broke into the studio where the community leader was broadcasting.
In the aftermath of the severe beating of a young journalist, a police chief is on the run and journalists are rallying for protection of freedom of expression across Mexico.
When a TV journalist was shot to death recently in Tegucigalpa, the police were quick to say the motive had nothing to do with his reporting work. Some publications say he was the 37th a journalist murdered in Honduras since 2003, while others say he was the 45th reporter killed during that same period.