Brazilian authorities are investigating the murder of journalist Evany José Metzker whose body was found decapitated on the outskirts of the town of Padre Paraíso in the state of Minas Gerais on May 18, reported the newspaper O Globo.
Police have detained a man allegedly involved in the murder of Mexican journalist Anabel Flores Salazar whose murder authorities said was motivated by her work as a journalist.
Authorities in Paraguay have sent Brazil a formal request for the extradition of the man accused of being the mastermind behind the murder of journalist Pablo Medina on Oct.16, 2014.
The assassination of two Colombian journalists in less than one month has again alarmed the country’s press, which has not forgotten the darker years when – due to drug trafficking and other criminal groups – the number of journalists killed because of their work was high.
The body of journalist José Moisés Sánchez Cerezo was found in the early hours of January 24, according to the Office of the Attorney General (PGJ) in the Mexican state of Veracruz. The journalist had disappeared on January 2, when armed and unidentified individuals pulled him from his house, located in Medellín de Bravo.
Paraguay, Brazil and Mexico placed in the top 20 deadliest countries for journalists in 2014, according to a special year-end report by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
Despite the comments of a senior Peruvian police official who said the killing of 22-year-old Lima reporter Fernando Raymondi was not motivated by his coverage of organized crime, drug trafficking and corruption, local journalists and international press freedom advocates continue to call for a thorough investigation of the shooting.
Impunity in the murder of journalists is not new in Latin America. In the last decade, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reported 72 instances of journalists killed for their work. About 78 percent of these cases faced complete or partial impunity. But in Mexico, Colombia and Brazil, levels of impunity have surpassed those of any other Latin American country, according to CPJ’s 2014 Global Impunity Index.
The recent murder of María del Rosario Fuentes Rubio, a physician and citizen journalist known on Twitter for her reports of cartel activity in northern Mexico, has sent shock waves through the state of Tamaulipas and shaken journalists working in citizen news networks across the region.
Paraguayan journalist Pablo Medina Velázquez, murdered in the northeastern Canindeyú department while working on assignment, is the third journalist to be killed in the country this year and the latest in a series of journalists to be killed in the region in recent years. His death underscores the dangerous and deteriorating conditions for journalists working along the Brazilian border.