• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• Africa
• Asia
• Europe & Central Asia
• Middle East & North Africa
SNAPSHOTS
Attacks & developments throughout the region
Attacks & developments throughout the region
| Belize Canada Dominican Republic El Salvador Guatemala |
Honduras Nicaragua Paraguay Peru Uruguay |
BELIZE
• Evan Hyde, host of “Wake Up Belize” on the Belize City-based Krem Radio, found the windows of his Toyota Tacoma smashed and two homemade bombs left on the passenger’s seat, the biweekly Amandala reported. Local police said someone attempted to light at least one of the explosive devices, according to press reports. Hyde told Channel 5 Belize that he believed the September 28 incident was a work-related reprisal.
• Rufus X, co-host of the political program “Kremandala Show” on local Krem TV and Radio, was passing through the gates surrounding his Belize City home at 10 p.m. on October 2 when an unidentified man beat him with an iron rod, Amandala reported. The journalist’s arm was broken in two places. In an interview with Channel 5 Belize, he said he believed the attacks were retaliation for Krem’s political views. Police were investigating.
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CANADA
• At least two individuals attacked Jawaad Faizi, a columnist for the New York-based Urdu-language biweekly Pakistan Post, as he was driving to a colleague’s home in Toronto on the evening of April 19. Faizi told local reporters that the assailants struck his car with cricket bats and smashed his windshield while screaming at him in Urdu and Punjabi to stop writing about the Muslim group Idara Minhaj-ul-Quran. Faizi had received repeated telephone threats prior to the attack, Muhammed Faruki, New York editor of the Pakistan Post, told CPJ.
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DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
• On May 2, a court in the southern city of Azua sentenced Vladimir Pujols, leader of the drug trafficking gang Los Sayayines, to 30 years in prison for the 2004 murder of local journalist Juan Emilio Andújar Matos. The court also ordered Pujols to pay 1.3 million pesos (US$39,500) to radio reporter Jorge Luis Sención, who witnessed the attack and was shot during a later ambush. Pujols’ lawyers told local reporters that he would appeal his conviction. The Dominican press reported that Ricardo Agramonte, identified as another gang member, was sentenced to five years in prison on a related conspiracy count.
• Erica Guzmán, correspondent in the eastern city of Samaná for the national daily Hoy and the national station Radio Popular, told CPJ that on the night of June 11, her daughter received two anonymous calls threatening the journalist and her family with death. According to Guzmán, the caller said the journalist talked too much. Guzmán told CPJ she believed the threats were linked to an article she had recently published on two local officials accused of corruption. Local authorities provided the correspondent with a police escort after she reported the threats.
• Robert Vargas, director of the biweekly Ciudad Oriental, was attacked and threatened by a group of people angered by the publication’s reporting on prostitution and disorderly conduct in bars in the city of Santo Domingo Este, the journalist told CPJ. At 3 a.m. on December 2, a group of unidentified individuals threw rocks and bottles at Vargas’ home, and one of the crowd members threatened to “rip his head off,” according to the journalist. The following day, Vargas denounced the attack in an interview with national television station Noticias SIN. Shortly after the interview, another group gathered outside his home, and at least one person fired gunshots in the air, Vargas said. Local police posted a unit outside Vargas’ home.
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EL SALVADOR
• Salvador Sánchez Roque, a freelance radio reporter, was shot to death on September 20 on a street in Florencia, a town four miles (seven kilometers) from the capital, San Salvador. Sánchez covered social movements and demonstrations, said David Rivas, director of local Radio Mi Gente, for which Sánchez often reported. In the weeks before the murder, Sánchez told Rivas that he had received death threats from the local arm of the Salvadoran gang Mara Salvatrucha, although the callers did not specify a reason for the threats. Salvadoran police arrested José Alfredo Hernández, a member of Mara Salvatrucha, on October 11.
• Borman Mármol, a photographer for the San Salvador-based daily La Prensa Gráfica, and Alex Nolasco, a reporter for the national TV station Canal 21, were assaulted in separate incidents while covering an October 25 protest in Cutumay Camones, a small town near the western city of Santa Ana. Protesters attacked Mármol after he refused demands to hand over his camera, the journalist told CPJ. Mármol said he suffered minor injuries. Police roughed up Nolasco as he and cameraman Walter Aparicio attempted to leave the scene in a marked Canal 21 van. Nolasco said he suffered minor injuries. Police said that they believed the van was stolen, according to local press reports.
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GUATEMALA
• On the night of February 3, an unidentified gunman aboard a motorcycle fired several times at a car owned by Wilder Jordán, a correspondent for the Guatemala City daily Nuestro Diario based in the eastern province of Zacapa, as the journalist was leaving his parents’ house. Jordán told CPJ he believed the attack was related to a January 15 article detailing the death of a local man after a car accident. According to the journalist, on the day the article appeared, four of the victim’s relatives came to his house and warned him that if he did not write a new piece saying that the man had instead died of a heart attack, he would face consequences. Fearing for his life, Jordán left his home in Zacapa.
• According to press reports, several journalists received anonymous threats directly linked to their coverage of the February 19 murder of three Salvadoran congressmen and their driver outside Guatemala City. Erick Salazar, news director for the program “Guatevisión,” which airs on the national television station of the same name, said the program received a threatening e-mail with details about Guatevisión staff and their families, the Spanish news service EFE reported. Reporters from a newspaper and two radio stations based in Guatemala City told the local media they had received similar e-mails and calls to their cell phones.
• Four journalists were assaulted on April 25 while covering a mob’s fatal attack on a purported gang member in the northeastern province of Quiché. Rudy Toledo, a reporter for the Quiché-based Televisión Cable Noticias; Oscar Toledo, correspondent for the national daily Nuestro Diario; Carlos Toledo, correspondent for the news program “TeleDiario” on the national television station Canal 3; and Oscar Figueroa, correspondent for the national radio station Emisoras Unidas, arrived at the scene at 10:30 a.m. According to Figueroa, heavily armed men punched and kicked the journalists, grabbed their equipment, and fired shots at the group, injuring Rudy Toledo in the left leg. Local police intervened and pulled the journalists out of the mob as protesters continued to fire at their car. Toledo was taken to a local hospital, where he received medical attention before being airlifted to Guatemala City. Toledo, though badly injured, recovered from his wounds.
• At 7 p.m. on May 3, veteran radio producer Mario Rolando López Sánchez was gunned down outside his home in Guatemala City. López produced the political debate program “Casos y Cosas de la Vida Nacional” and various social programs on national privately owned Radio Sonora. According to the journalist’s colleagues and family, he had not received any threats prior to the shooting. However, Arnulfo Agustín Guzmán, director of Radio Sonora, told CPJ that the station had been threatened repeatedly.
• Edwin David Hernández, cameraman for the news program “Noti Star” on the national cable channel Star TV, told CPJ that several masked men stopped him on August 27 as he was on his way to cover a protest against the mayor of Cubulco. He was held for three and a half hours, and released after the protest was over. Hernández told CPJ his assailants wanted to stop him from filming the faces of people participating in the protest.
• On September 4, five days before the presidential election, an unidentified individual fired a gunshot into the offices of the Guatemala City-based Radio Nuevo Mundo. Marbin Robledo, director of the radio station, told CPJ the gunshot struck close to one of the station’s reporters, but no one was injured. The station’s staff believed the shot was meant as intimidation for its critical coverage of the presidential campaign, Robledo said.
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HONDURAS
• In May, CPJ wrote a letter to President José Manuel Zelaya Rosales expressing concern over his May 24 proclamation that all radio and television stations would be required to simultaneously broadcast interviews with public officials. Zelaya decreed that 10 official broadcasts would be aired in order “to counteract the misinformation of the news media” about his tenure in office, according to international press reports and CPJ interviews. Regulations established by the National Telecommunications Commission gave Zelaya the authority to pre-empt radio and television programming for emergency broadcasts. Honduran journalists and press freedom advocates said they believed Zelaya’s May 24 order contradicted the Honduran constitution and violated the spirit of the American Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees the right “to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas.”
• Unidentified individuals shot and killed radio journalist Carlos Salgado on the afternoon of October 18 as he was leaving the offices of Radio Cadena Voces in the capital city of Tegucigalpa. Salgado, 67, host of the radio program “Frijol el Terrible,” was known for his satirical criticism of the country’s political system. His show mixed humor with coverage of everyday problems in Honduras. Local police arrested Germán David Almendárez Amador in late October after witnesses identified him as the gunman. Dagoberto Rodríguez, director of Radio Cadena Voces, told CPJ he believed the attack was retaliation for the station’s investigative reporting on official corruption. Rodríguez said the station had been continuously harassed and threatened over two years. On November 1, Rodríguez himself fled the country after police said his name had appeared on a hit list.
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NICARAGUA
• On February 14, three members of the ruling Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN) approached William Aragón, a correspondent in the northern Madriz province for the Managua-based daily La Prensa, and advised him to get a bulletproof vest and a police helmet for his personal security, the journalist told CPJ. According to Aragón, the three men said they had attended a meeting with other FSLN members, during which plans were made to kill the journalist. Aragón said he believed the threat was linked to two articles on alleged government corruption published in La Prensa on February 5. Aragón reported the threat to local authorities.
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PARAGUAY
• CPJ sent a letter to President Nicanor Duarte Frutos on February 8, expressing concern over the fate of Enrique Galeano, host of a morning news and music program on the Horqueta-based Radio Azotey who disappeared on the afternoon of February 4, 2006, while on his way home from work in the central province of Concepción. Galeano resurfaced in the Brazilian city of São Paulo on July 14, after Paraguayan journalists discovered his whereabouts, according to press reports. Galeano said two unidentified men had kidnapped him, taken him to Brazil, and told him to keep silent or his family would be killed. His captors did not specify their motive, but Galeano said he had received several anonymous death threats after reporting on links between the local government and drug traffickers. Shortly after his reappearance, Galeano relocated to Uruguay, where he requested political asylum, said Vicente Páez, secretary-general of the journalists union Sindicato de Periodistas de Paraguay.
• Oscar Bogado Silva, correspondent for the Asunción-based daily Última Hora, told CPJ that he received repeated telephone threats after reporting on local corruption and marijuana production along Paraguay’s southern border. On April 18, a car followed the reporter from his house to his wife’s office and back, Bogado told CPJ. Anonymous callers later mentioned details about his routine. According to the journalist, on April 24, unidentified individuals broke into his home in the southern city of Encarnación and left all the windows and doors open. A day later, Bogado said, he received a call from an unidentified individual, warning him that he was being watched.
• Tito Alberto Palma, a reporter for the local radio station Radio Mayor Otaño and correspondent for the Asunción-based Radio Chaco Boreal, was gunned down on the night of August 22 as he was having dinner at a friend’s home in the southeastern city of Mayor Otaño, according to press reports and CPJ interviews. A Chilean national, Palma often denounced organized crime, illegal smuggling of gas, and local government corruption in the province of Itapúa, a colleague at Radio Chaco Boreal, Erico González, told CPJ. Palma had also reported recently on the existence of illegal radio stations in the area. González told CPJ the reporter had received death threats, which had intensified a month prior to his death. A week before the murder, Palma announced on the air that he was returning to Chile because of the threats. González told CPJ that Palma’s colleagues believe he was murdered in retaliation for his work.
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PERU
• On March 17, two hooded individuals shot and killed Miguel Pérez Julca outside his home in the northwestern city of Jaén. His wife, Nelly Guevara, was wounded in the attack. Pérez, 38, host of the radio program “El Informativo del Pueblo” (Bulletin of the People) on local Radio Éxitos, covered local crime and allegations of government corruption. One of four suspects originally detained in connection with the murder, José Hurtado Vásquez, remained in custody in late year. According to Peruvian press reports, he was accused of hiring two gunmen to kill Pérez in retaliation for on-air criticism of his girlfriend, the director of a local nonprofit organization. Hurtado denied the accusation. Local colleagues and Lima-based journalists who spoke to CPJ said they were skeptical of the police investigation. According to the national daily La República, police had not looked into a claim made by Pérez during his last show that he planned to reveal the names of corrupt local police officers.
• On May 22, the Fifth Criminal Court of Lima convicted Rocío Vásquez Goicochea, director of the weekly Investigando Chimbote in the northeastern Áncash region, of criminal defamation, the journalist told CPJ. Vásquez was given a one-year suspended prison sentence and ordered to pay 3,000 soles (US$1,000) to local businessman Samuel Dyer. Dyer filed a defamation suit against Vásquez in 2005 after the reporter wrote a series accusing Dyer’s company of illegal fishing practices and corruption. The journalist told CPJ her lawyers had filed an appeal.
• Orlando Rucana Cuba, director of daily news programming on Radio Melodía and Radio Alegría, told CPJ that on May 24 he received an anonymous text message from an undisclosed number threatening him and Manuel Caballero Vidal, a journalist with the television station Canal 13. Rucana told CPJ that he was not sure what coverage could have sparked the threats. The two journalists had covered a violent protest against the local mayor’s change in education policies in the provincial capital, Huaraz, the day before the message was sent.
• Five journalists were fired on when they witnessed what appeared to be an illegal occupation of land near the northeastern town of San Julián on June 28, said Paola Lee, a reporter for national América Televisión. The owners of the land had invited Lee; Sandro Chambergo, a reporter for the national daily Correo; Perla Polo, a camerawoman for América TV; and Gerardo Pérez and Rafael Rojas, a reporter and a photographer for La República. As the journalists and property owners stepped out of their vehicles, unidentified men began to shoot at the group. According to Lee, one of the landowners yelled, “Don’t shoot, the press is here,” but the gunfire intensified. None of the journalists were injured, but eight of the landowners received minor gunshot wounds.
• José Ramírez, correspondent for the Lima-based daily La Primera, was threatened and his companions detained after he tried to photograph graffiti denouncing provincial Gov. César Álvarez in Huari, a city in the northeastern Áncash region. A group of local officials interrupted the assignment, threatened Ramírez, and seized the photographer’s three companions. While Ramírez was able to flee, his companions were taken to a local police station, where they were roughed up. Ramírez said he later left Huari after receiving repeated telephone threats. Wilbur Avendaño, a legal representative for the local government, denied the allegations.
• On November 14, the Superior Court of Ucayali sentenced two men in the 2004 murder of Alberto Rivera Fernández, host of the morning show “Transparencia” (Transparency) on the Pucallpa-based Frecuencia Oriental radio station, according to Peruvian press reports. The court sentenced Lito Fasabi to 35 years in prison and Alex Panduro Ventura to 20 years. The court acquitted Luis Valdez Villacorta, former Pucallpa mayor, and Solio Ramírez, a former government official, citing a lack of evidence. Rivera’s family appealed the decision to the Peruvian Supreme Court, local press reports said. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights announced that it would investigate the decision.
• On November 23, two men pointed handguns at Danilo Bautista Hernández, host of the daily news program “El Informativo del Mediodía” (Noon Report) on local Radio California, as the journalist was swimming with family members in the Yuracyacu River in the northern region of San Matín. Hernández told CPJ that witnesses came to the family’s aid, forcing the assailants to flee. Officer Robert Llanos Petrel, a spokesman for the local police, told CPJ that an investigation was under way. In March, Hernández received repeated death threats from individuals who identified themselves as members of a local group that had sought education reform. The journalist had criticized the group’s tactics.
• A purported hit list containing the names of several journalists and signed by the leftist guerrilla group Sedero Luminoso (Shining Path) was slipped under the door of the mayor’s office in Aucayacu, in the central province of Huánuco, according to Ranforte Lozano Panduro, director of local Radio Aucayacu and president of the Center for Press and Communications for the Development of the Amazon. The December 15 list, reviewed by CPJ, contained 15 names in all. The journalists named were Lozano; Novel Panduro Ruíz and Cirilo Velasquez Hilario, reporters for Radio Luz; and Segundo Ramírez Macedo, reporter for Radio Aucayacu and correspondent for the regional daily AHORA. Lozano told CPJ that he and his colleagues cover general local news. He said he believes they were targeted because they use local authorities as sources. The national police were investigating.
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URUGUAY
• On April 18, the Supreme Court of Justice upheld a three-month suspended prison sentence against Gustavo Escanlar Patrone, host of the satirical television program “Bendita TV” (Blessed TV). The decision let stand a 2006 criminal defamation conviction by a lower court in Montevideo, the journalist’s lawyer, Edison Lanza, told CPJ. The case stemmed from a January 2006 interview on the Canal 10 television program “La Culpa es Mía,” in which Escanlar referred to a media company owner by using a vulgarity.
ANALYSIS:
Preaching Without a Choir
By Carlos Lauría
Versión en español
COUNTRY SUMMARIES:
Argentina
Bolivia
Brazil
Colombia
Cuba
Ecuador
Haiti
Mexico
United States
Venezuela
Country summaries in this chapter were reported and written by Senior Americas Program Coordinator Carlos Lauría, Research Associate María Salazar, Program Consultant Marcelo Soares, and Washington Representative Frank Smyth.