Radio journalist Jairo Sousa was killed while arriving at Rádio Pérola FM in the northern state of Pára in the early morning of June 21. He was going to host his program “Show da Peróla.”
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos posted on Twitter on June 21 that three bodies were found that could belong to a team of journalists and their driver who worked for Ecuadoran newspaper El Comercio and were reportedly killed in a border region by a dissident group of the FARC.
Three bodies that could belong to two Ecuadoran journalists and a driver for newspaper El Comercio were found in Colombia, 88 days after the team was abducted near the border of the two countries.
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR Court) found the Colombian State responsible for the 1998 murder of journalist Nelson Carvajal Carvajal, and for a failure to guarantee the victim’s right to freedom of expression.
The Special Prosecutor’s Office for the Attention of Crimes Committed against Freedom of Expression (Feadle) of Mexico, with the help of Federal Police, carried out an arrest warrant against Juan Francisco “N,” “for his probable participation in the murder of journalist Javier Valdez Cárdenas, on May 15, 2017.”
The names of two journalists from Mexico and another from Colombia will be added to the Journalists Memorial at the Washington, D.C.-based Newseum.
Mexican journalist Héctor González Antonio was found dead on May 29 in Ciudad Victoria, capital of the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, according to local authorities.
Mexican authorities arrested Arturo Quintina, known as “El 80,” an alleged drug trafficker suspected of ordering the March 2017 murder of journalist Miroslava Breach, according to El País.
The call for justice for Mexico’s journalists will not stop, despite years of violence and impunity that plagues the profession in that Latin American country. To mark the one-year anniversary of the murder of Sinaloa-based reporter Javier Valdez, colleagues and friends carried out a National Day of Protest on social media and in person, calling for his killers to be brought to justice and for an end to violence against the journalists who uncover things that many would prefer were kept secret.
Mexican journalist Juan Carlos Huerta was killed in Tabasco on the morning of May 15 in what appears to be a targeted hit. His death comes on the one-year anniversary of the murder of journalist Javier Valdez, calling attention to the grave violence being faced by the Mexican press.