Although the number of murders of Brazilian journalists has dropped to only two cases in 2016, violations against the press have manifested in other ways. The annual report from the Brazilian Association of Radio and Television Broadcasters (Abert) reported that, compared to 2015, last year saw a 65.5 percent increase in cases of violations to freedom of expression.
A radio announcer and the director of a radio station in the Dominican Republic were killed on the morning of Feb. 14 in the city of San Pedro de Macorís. According to EFE, an armed man entered the location and began firing several times. However, local media pointed out that there could have been two male attackers.
A Guatemalan congressman was named by the country’s authorities as the alleged mastermind of the March 10, 2015 murder of journalist Danilo Efraín Zapón López, according to the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG for its acronym in Spanish).
After having undergone the first surgery to save the vision of his left eye, the doctors at the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute of Miami have given Marco “Atoq” Ramón, a Peruvian photographer with newspaper Perú.21, a hopeful prognosis.
Early in the morning of May 6, 1996, Gustavo Díaz, a merchant in the port of Turbo, in Urabá, Colombia, lost everything. His wife and two of his daughters were murdered and burned along with his grocery store at the hands of guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), in one of more than 2,000 massacres that have occurred in that country since 1982.
Igor Abisaí Padilla Chávez, a well-known Honduran journalist, was killed in San Pedro Sula on Jan. 17.
Since Jan. 1, hundreds of Mexicans have taken to the streets of different cities in the country to protest the increase of up to 20 percent in the price of fuel. Some of the protests for the “gasolinazo,” as the demonstrations are known, have become violent, including looting and clashes with police with number of people killed, injured and detained.
Marco Antonio Ramón, a 25-year-old Peruvian photojournalist, could lose his left eye after being hit by a flurry of rubber bullets from the police while covering a protest for newspaper Peru.21 in Lima.
For decades, Colombian journalism has been a direct victim of the violence generated by the country’s armed conflict that started more than 50 years ago. The signing of the new peace agreement with the FARC guerrillas, endorsed by the country’s Congress on Nov. 30, could mean the end of one of the causes of violent censorship for journalists in Colombia.
Although the number of murders of journalists in the world has dropped from record levels, two Latin American countries are among the deadliest for communicators in 2016, according to the year-end report from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).