A U.S. journalist working in Chile said he was unjustly arrested, and criticized the police brutality that has worsened since multiple protests erupted in Chile in May 2011, reported the news agency UPI.
Mexican senators approved a proposal ("dictamen de ley") that would require federal authorities to investigate, prosecute, and punish crimes against journalists or any attacks affecting the rights to access of information, freedom of expression or of the press, according to a statement from the Senate.
Three Guatemalan journalists were assaulted by prison guards while investigating prison conditions, reported the newspaper Prensa Libre on Wednesday, Feb. 29.
A team of television journalists from Globovisión in Venezuela was threatened while covering attacks by supporters of President Hugo Hugo Chavez against opposition candidate Henrique Caprilles Radonski in Cotiza, a neighborhood in the capital city of Caracas, according to Globovisión.
A Chilean journalist was attacked by police while taking photos of a demonstration in support of residents of the region of Aysén in Santiago on Friday, Feb. 24, according to the Corporation of Promotion and Defense of the People's Rights (CODEPU in Spanish).
Unknown assailants beat a Mexican political journalist on Thursday, Feb. 23, in the city of Mexicali, located in northeastern Mexico along the Californian border, reported the Program for Freedom of Expression (Libex).
A reporter denounced aggression by the president of the local city council of Matozinhos, in the state of Minas Gerais in southeastern Brazil, after a meeting on Monday, Feb. 27, in which the council approved a 34 percent hike in members' salaries, reported the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo.
Bolivia's National Press Association (ANP in Spanish) documented 200 cases of aggression against journalists in Bolivia in 2011, reported the news website Clases de Periodismo.
Three journalists from a local television channel in Honduras received death threats for covering the prision fire which killed 350 inmates Feb. 14 in the city of Comayagua, in central Honduras, reported the Committee for Free Expression (C-Libre in Spanish).
As presidential elections in Venezuela approach, President Hugo Chavez on Saturday, March 24, criticized the alleged assaults on journalists of the state-run National System of Public Media committed by supporters of the opposition, according to the website for the Venezuelan National Assembly.
To avoid police aggression, reporters in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, work in groups when covering seizures, arrests and any other crime in this city on the U.S-Mexico border, now considered the second most violent in the world after spending three years in first place. “While one person speaks with officials, others are ready with their cameras to make public any incidents of aggression," explained Alfredo Quijano, editor of the local newspaper Norte, in an interview with the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas.
An Italian journalist criticized Honduran soldiers for intimidating and threatening foreign press members who were covering the International Gathering for Human Rights, held in the Lower Aguán, a valley in northern Honduras where farm workers seeking to reclaim their lands have suffered repression and abuse, reported the organization C-Libre.