With more than 500 killings during the last 10 years, journalism is one of the most dangerous professions in the world, according to an alert from the United Nations.
One year after the alleged attempted coup d’etat that shook Ecuador on Sept. 30, 2010 (known as 30S), Fundamedios published a report about attacks against the media and freedom of expression in the country. The report studies attacks before and after 30S, and shows a significant increase in the number of aggressions against journalists in the last year.
Gunmen fired six shots into the car of Brazilian reporter Sérgio Ricardo de Almeida da Luz on the morning of Wednesday, Oct. 5, in the city of Toledo in the southern state of Paraná, reported the website O Paraná. The car was parked outside the reporter's home. No one was in the car during the attack.
A member of the Colombian criminal organization Los Urabeños called in to a radio show in the northern city of Valledupar saying that he had been ordered to attack a journalist and several other individuals, reported the Colombian Foundation for Freedom of the Press (FLIP in Spanish).
The United Nations Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression said he would ask the Honduran government permission to investigate the killings of 16 journalists in the Central American country since the June 2009 coup d'état, reported the news agency EFE.
Police detained two suspects for the killing of two reporters in Mexico City, reported the newspaper El Universal. The reporters, Marcela Yarce and Rocío González Trápaga, were killed in an abandoned property on the evening of Sept. 1, on their way to exchange one million Mexican pesos (more than U.S. $72,000) into U.S. dollars, reported the EFE news agency.
The director-general of UNESCO, Irina Bokova, condemned the killing of Brazilian journalist Valderlei Canuto Leandro, who was shot eight times by unidentified men on Sept. 1 in the city of Tabatinga, in the Amazons, UNESCO reported on Sunday, Oct. 2.
The leader behind the guerrilla Paraguayan People's Army (EPP in Spanish), who is serving a prison sentence for kidnapping, told the newspaper La Nación in a tape-recorded interview that journalists would become military targets if they acted as "informants" for the government.
A journalist in the Gulf state of Veracruz, Mexico was reported missing by his family, reported the newspaper La Jornada de Veracruz.
Brazilian photographer Edu Fortes, 27 years-old, of Grupo RAC, was attacked by two men who were setting fire to the side of the José Roberto Magalhães Teixeira highway, in the interior of the state of São Paulo, reported RAC's website.
Journalist Silvia González was forced to quit her job at the newspaper El Nuevo Día and flee Nicaragua after receiving several death threats since July 30, 2011, reported the newspaper.
Journalist Mario Castro Rodríguez, director of the Globo TV news program "The scourge of corruption" in Honduras, claims to have received death threats via text messages, according to the Press and Society Institute.