The Prosecutor’s Office in Mato Grosso state has charged politicians and businessmen from the city of Juína with kidnapping, false imprisonment, and illegal restraint, after allegedly sequestering several reporters and activists who were trying to film a documentary on deforestation and the Enawene Nawe indigenous peoples, Folha de S. Paulo and Greenpeace report. The attackers feared they would help the tribe in land disputes with local farmers.
Drug-related violence in Mexico has not only left more than 28,000 dead since 2006, it has also plunged the local press into a crisis, one that has laid bare the chronic weaknesses of Mexican journalism.
Fernando Collor de Mello, a former president and current senator, threatened Hugo Marques, a reporter for IstoÉ magazine, for publishing an article about efforts to invalidate his candidacy for governor of Alagoas state, O Globo reports.
Martín López, a journalist and host at Canal 44 in Ciudad Juárez, has joined the ranks of media workers who have sought asylum in the U.S. border city of El Paso, after receiving threats from drug traffickers.
Alberto Maquieira, the president of newsprint manufacturer Papel Prensa, has received several threatening letters that say things like “Maquieira, we are watching you,” La Nación reports.
Vânia Costa, a journalist for the newspaper O Mato Grosso in the central-western state of the same name, reported suffering harassment after she tried to investigate alleged misuse of federal funds in the city of Sinop, Folha Online reports.
Gabriel Bustamante, a reporter based in the southern city of Ayolas who works with FM Ayolas, La Nación, and Crónica, survived three alleged murder attempts last week, the Paraguayan Journalists’ Union and Reporters Without Borders (RWB) report.
Two reporters and two cameramen were kidnapped from the city of Gómez Palacio in Durango state, where they were covering prisoner unrest, the Los Angeles Times reports. The inmates were protesting revelations that jail officials allegedly armed inmates and used them to carry out drug-related killings, BBC explains.
Just two days after four journalists were kidnapped in Durango state, Ulises González García was abducted from his home in the middle of the night, presumably to be held for ransom, La Jornada reports. The journalist is the director of the weekly paper La Opinión, based in Jerez, Zacatecas in north-central Mexico.
Reporter Márcia Pache, of TV Centro Oeste, the affiliate of the channel Sistema Brasileño de Televisión (SBT) in Mato Grosso, filed another complaint against Councilman Lourivaldo Rodrigues de Moraes, of the city of Pontes e Lacerda, for continuing to intimidate her, reported Comunique-se.