Brazilian journalist Paulo Roberto Cardoso Rodrigues was shot to death during an attack the night of Sunday, Feb. 12, in Ponta Porã in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul on the border with Paraguay, reported Última Hora. Police suspect it was a hired killing.
Authorities from the Dominican Public Ministry raided the offices of the digital newspaper El Siglo 21 and two residences of journalist Guillermo Gómez on Feb. 10, reported the newspaper El Nacional. Allegedly, José Ángel Gómez Canáan, the journalist's son, participated in a spy network accused of hacking into the e-mail accounts of First Lady Margarita Cedeño de Fernández and several high-ranking bank executives, reported Listín Diario.
Inspired by Colombia's Journalist Day, the Foundation for Press Freedom (FLIP in Spanish) presented a report expressing its concern over the state of freedom of expression in Colombia. The Colombian Federation of Journalists also released a statement noting that while there were fewer reporters killed in 2011, violence against journalists continues to rise in the Andean country.
With violence, political unrest and impunity increasingly taking hold of Latin America, freedom of expression is constantly being violated in Central American countries, with journalists being threatened, attacked, intimidated, kidnapped, tortured and killed for political, monetary, criminal and ideological motivations.
A reporting crew from the Venezuelan newspaper Últimas Notícias was detained by the Bolivarian Militia in a hospital in the capital, Caracas, on Feb. 8, reported the website Clases de Periodismo.
Brazilian political journalist Mário Randolfo Marques Lopes was killed in the early hours of Feb. 9, in the city of Barra do Piraí, in the state of Rio de Janeiro, along with his girlfriend, reported Diário do Vale. Known for criticizing authorities in the region on his website Vassouras na Net (Vassouras Online), Lopes survived an attempt on his life at his home in July of last year.
In the early morning of Feb. 8, a fire destroyed part of the offices of the Brazilian newspaper Folha do Boqueirão in the city of Curitiba, Paraná, reported the website Bonde News.
The vehicle of television journalists from TV Clube was attacked Thursday, Feb. 2, when the reporting crew, affiliated with the channel TV Record, was preparing to cover a Carnival event in the center of the Brazilian city of Recife, reported Portal PS.
On the morning of Feb. 3, mourners attacked journalists covering the burial of Anabel Arguello, a Venezuelan girl killed in a skirmish in the western city of Maracaibo, reported the website NotiZulia.
Bullet holes were found in the side of the offices of TV Oeste, an affiliate of the Brazilian broadcaster TV Bahia, on the morning of Jan. 4, in the northeastern city of Barreiras, reported the website G1. According to witnesses, two men on a motorcycle drove up to the building and fired three shots into its facade.
The Juarez Journalists Network reported three city police attacks on reporters in one week in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. The latest came the evening of Friday, Feb. 3, when police officers arrested and beat a reporter for El Diario in the newspaper's parking lot, according to Clases de Periodismo and Objetivo Radio.
In two separate events, police attacked journalists in Mexico on Jan. 30. A reporter from the newspaper Noroeste was beaten by judicial police and his camera was taken, reported the same publication. Hours later, the reporter recovered his camera but the officers had deleted the photos he had taken of a skirmish in which three soldiers died in the city of Guasave, in the northwestern state of Sinaloa.