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.
A group of 60 journalists in Nicaragua’s capital city gathered in the offices of the national police to demand investigations into recent attacks on the press, which they allege are going unaddressed.
A new report by Freedom of Expression advocacy organization Article 19-Mexico attributed a continuing trend of attacks against journalists to the Mexican government’s routine failure to prosecute attackers.
Paraguayan journalist Fausto Gabriel Alcaraz was shot and killed on Friday May 16 in the city of Pedro Juan Caballero, on the border with Brazil, several local media outlets reported.
Between January and April 2014, 47 attacks against journalists and media outlets took place across different cities in Peru, according to a recent report by the human rights office of Peru's National Association of Journalists (ANP). In average, a journalist was a victim of attacks, threats or judicial persecution once every four days.
Mexican journalists in Veracruz and other groups marched on Monday, April 28, to commemorate reporter Regina Martínez, who was killed two years ago on the same day, according to Proceso magazine.
A bomb planted by unknown men detonated in front of a home belonging to Peruvian journalist Yofré López Sifuentes in the early hours of Tuesday April 22, according to the daily La República.
Sixty-six aggressions against the Mexican press were registered during the first quarter of 2014 according to a report published April 22 by the freedom of expression and information organization Article 19.
Only 19 percent of all registered cases of journalists’ homicides and disappearances have been heard by a judge and only 10 percent of those have ended in a sentencing, leaving Mexico’s impunity index at 89 percent, according to the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) in a press release on April 20.