Reporters Without Borders criticized police violence against local and international journalists covering protests in Chile, and expressed concern for the safety of journalists in a statement released Monday, March 19.
In 2011, 172 attacks against the Mexican press were registered, and nine of these were killings. That's up from the 155 attacks recorded in 2010, according to a report from the organization Article 19 released Tuesday, March 20. The report, Forced Silence: The State Complicit in Violence Against the Press, shows that public officials were responsible for more than half of these attacks, according to the magazine Proceso.
Most attacks against the Mexican press come from police and military, and authorities are collaborating with organized crime by not investigating or punishing cases that harm freedom of expression, according to several Mexican media reporting on an upcoming study titled "Forced Silence: The State, Accomplice in Violence Against the Press in Mexico." The report is to be released by the press freedom organization Article 19 on Tuesday, March 20, in Mexico City.
On Monday, March, 19, a car bomb exploded in front of the offices of a Mexican newspaper in Ciudad Victoria, capital of the northern state of Tamaulipas, reported the BBC. This makes the 25th armed attack with explosives against news media outlets in Mexico in the last three years -- none of which have been investigated by authorities, according to an upcoming report from the press freedom organization Article 19 that will be released on Tuesday, March 20.
The Guatemalan press reported 33 assaults during 2011, an election year, up from 19 incidents in 2010, according to a report published on Thursday, March, 15, by the Journalist Observatory of the Cerigua Agency.
Colombian journalist and political leader Argemiro Cárdenas Agudelo was shot to death on Thursday, March 15, reported the Foundation for Press Freedom (FLIP in Spanish).
The organization Reporters without Borders expressed concern that charges were dropped against the suspects in the killing of a journalist, cameraman Normando García, who was killed in the Dominican Republic on Aug. 7, 2008, reported the organization.
A journalist was abducted by armed kidnappers the night of Wednesday, March, 7, while he was waiting for his girlfriend at a university in Aracaju, capital of the state of Sergipe in Brazil, reported the news site G1.
A radio broadcaster became the 19th journalist killed in Honduras since 2010, prompting press groups to call for an investigation into the violence, reported the Associated Press.
A Haitian radio journalist was shot to death Monday, March 5, in Cité Soleil, the poorest neighborhood of the capital, Port-au-Prince, reported Reporters Without Borders.
A team of television journalists from Globovisión in Venezuela was threatened while covering attacks by supporters of President Hugo Hugo Chavez against opposition candidate Henrique Caprilles Radonski in Cotiza, a neighborhood in the capital city of Caracas, according to Globovisión.
A reporter denounced aggression by the president of the local city council of Matozinhos, in the state of Minas Gerais in southeastern Brazil, after a meeting on Monday, Feb. 27, in which the council approved a 34 percent hike in members' salaries, reported the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo.