Los Urabeños and Los Rastrojos, paramilitary groups in Colombia, have published hits lists threatening a combined ten journalists with consequences if they don’t immediately abandon their posts and leave the towns where they work.
The Organization of American States' special rapporteur for Freedom of Expression released a statement in which it “express[ed] its deepest concern for the deterioration of the right to freedom of expression in Venezuela.”
A Paraguayan radio host was shot and killed in his home on June 19, just over one month after another radio reporter was killed on the same region, near the border with Brazil. Édgar Fernández Fleitas was a known critic of the local justice system and could have been killed in retribution for criticisms he made of local officials, according to newspaper ABC Color.
Investigative journalist Mark Bassant was forced to leave Trinidad and Tobago last week after receiving death threats, the International Press Institute (IPI) informed.
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.
Reporters Without Borders denounced that Colombian investigative journalist, Claudia Julieta Duque, continues to receive threats as her court case advances against the agents of the country's Department of Security (DAS) who, in the last 10 years, have followed, psychologically tortured and kidnapped her.
Carlos Mejía Orellana, an employee with Honduran radio station Radio Progreso, was stabbed and killed in the municipality of El Progreso on April 11, Reporters Without Borders informed.
Three Latin American countries were listed in the latest edition of the Committee to Protect Journalists’ (CPJ) Global Impunity Index. Mexico, Colombia and Brazil occupied, respectively, the seventh, eighth and eleventh place on the list.
After being kidnapped for eight days, Venezuelan journalist Nairobi Pinto was safely released today April 14, Globovisión reported. Pinto was freed in the city of Cúa, where she was met and taken care of by municipal police and then moved to Caracas.
Mexico's Secretary of Interior Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong called the country's Mechanism to Protect Journalists a “failure” that will require restructuring to carry out its responsibilities as established by the law, Proceso magazine reported.
Venezuelan journalist and Globovisión newsroom editor Nairobi Pinto was kidnapped by three masked and armed men on Sunday April, 5 news agency Venezuela Al Día reported.