After a six-week investigation, Venezuelan police have concluded that journalist Wilfred Ojeda was killed in revenge over a debt and had nothing to do with his journalistic work, reported ACN.
In a joint operation, federal and civil police from the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Norte arrested on July 2 and 3 five suspects accused of killing community journalist Ednaldo Filgueira, who also blogged and was president of the local chapter of the Workers Party, reported the news site No Minuto.
Mexican journalist Ángel Castillo Corona, columnist for the digital newspaper Portal, was killed along with his teen-age son, early Sunday morning, July 3, when they were assaulted while driving in the city of Tianguistenco in Mexico State, Portal reported.
After the wave of journalist killings in Honduras in 2010 that prompted President Porfirio Lobo to ask the U.S. FBI for help, so far in 2011 three journalists have been killed. Adán Benítez, veteran host and journalist who worked for more than 16 years in radio and television, was shot to death on his way home in the city of La Ceiba on Monday, July 4, reported La Prensa Gráfica.
Guatemalan journalist Jorge Arquímides Manchamé Palma was killed in the city of Esquipulas, in the southeastern Guatemalan department of Chiquimula, on Sunday, July 3, reported the newspaper Prensa Libre.
The government of the Mexican state of Veracruz is offering a reward of more than a quarter-million dollars for information about the killing of a journalist, reported El Universal.
The Press and Society Institute (IPYS) issued two alerts for journalists who were attacked and threatened on university campuses in Peru and Venezuela.
Edinaldo Figueira, newspaper founder, blogger and political party leader was shot to death Wednesday, June 15, in Brazil, according to Terra. Figueira, president of the Serra do Mel municipal chapter of Brazil's Workers' Party (PT in Portuguese) in Brazil's northern state of Rio Grande do Norte, had started a local newspaper and maintained a blog about local issues, according to Rede Brasil Atual.
Journalist Miguel Ángel López Velasco, a security and drug trafficking expert, was killed in his home with his wife and son in the eastern port city of Veracruz, The Associated Press reports. López is the second Mexican journalist killed in less than a week, in the midst of unrelenting attacks against the press, which also includes the kidnapping of another reporter 11 days ago.
Norte newspaper, based in the U.S.-Mexico border city of Cuidad Juárez, denounced a series of incidents against its reporters by federal police forces tasked with fighting organized crime and drug trafficking, the National Center for Social Communication (CENCOS in Spanish) reports. The paper is renowned for continuing to cover drug trafficking issues in Mexico’s deadliest city.
In spite of promises from media outlets and the Mexican authorities to improve protection for journalists exposed to drug trafficking violence, attacks against the press are unceasing, prompting media workers to take to the streets to pressure the government to end the violence.
With the Mexican press still reeling from the recent disappearance of one journalist and the appearance in a hidden grave of the body of another journalist, now local media are reporting the June 14 killing of reporter Pablo Ruelas Barraza in Huatabampo, in the northern Mexican state of Sonora.