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.
The Foundation for Press Freedom (FLIP) in Colombia reported two recent aggressions against a journalist and a photographer by national police agents. These were added to the 57 attacks against the press registered during the first few months of 2014, of which 13, or 23 percent, were committed by police.
On Wednesday, March 26, four weeks after being kidnapped, beaten and threatened as a result of content published in a magazine he directed, Mexican journalist Gilberto Moreno Fontes took his own life in his home in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, according to news agency Proceso.
Ten days after the sudden resignation of the head of Mexico's Mechanism to Protect Journalists Juan Carlos Gutiérrez Contreras, members of the federal agency's independent advisory group revealed that more than half of the cases of threats and attacks against journalists that the Mechanism has received in the last two years haven't been reviewed yet, Animal Político reported.
A joint mission composed by members of several international and Mexican press freedom organizations reported on March 19 the results of their recent visit to Veracruz to investigate the killing of journalist Gregorio Jiménez de la Cruz, according to digital newspaper Terra.
Last week Brazil's Secretary of Human Rights Maria do Rosário announced new recommendations to protect journalists, which would include providing a Federal Police security detail to threatened journalists, reported news portal A Tarde.
On Sunday, March 16, unknown suspects broke into the Mexico City house of Darío Ramírez, regional director of the freedom of expression organization Article 19. They took his work documents and computers, according to the news site Animal Político.