Guatemala / Americas

  

Tipping the scales: Journalists’ lawyers face retaliation around the globe

The smears began the day Christian Ulate began representing jailed Guatemalan journalist José Rubén Zamora: tweets accusing the lawyer of being a leftist or questioning his legal credentials. He began to fear he was being surveilled.  Ulate had taken over the case in August 2022 from two other lawyers, Romeo Montoya García and Mario Castañeda,…

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Jose Ruben Zamora

‘To persecute any critical voice’: Jailed Guatemalan journalist Zamora’s son on his father’s arrest

When Guatemalan police arrested José Rubén Zamora in July 2022, it marked the latest salvo in a decades-long campaign of harassment against the pioneering Guatemalan investigative journalist, who won CPJ’s International Press Freedom Award in 1995. Zamora, who founded elPeriódico in 1996 and still serves as president of the newspaper, was arrested on July 29….

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A press freedom crisis unfolds in Latin America

As the number of journalists imprisoned globally for their work climbs to record highs, cases of those behind bars in Latin America remained relatively low. A total of six – three in Cuba, two in Nicaragua and one in Brazil – were in custody for their work as of December 1, according to the Committee…

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April 2021: The ‘voice of the people’: Anastasia Mejía vows to keep reporting after Guatemala arrest

On August 24, 2020, Anastasia Mejía prepared herself for yet another day of reporting in Joyabaj in central Guatemala. At 49 years old, she had spent the previous 11 years covering the city’s Indigenous Maya K’iche’ community, to which she belongs. Her subject that day was a protest of mostly Maya K’iche’ merchants who wanted…

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CPJ, Human Rights Watch call on Guatemala to improve press freedom, access to information

The Committee to Protect Journalists and Human Rights Watch today issued a joint statement calling on Guatemalan authorities to stop harassing the press, strengthen protections for journalists, and ensure the government response to the COVID-19 pandemic does not restrict press freedom or access to information. The statement notes that the administration of President Alejandro Giammattei,…

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CPJ joins call for Guatemalan authorities to drop criminal charges against journalist Anastasia Mejía

The Committee to Protect Journalists today joined 50 human rights organizations, media outlets, and individuals in a statement calling on Guatemalan authorities to drop all remaining charges against Indigenous radio journalist Anastasia Mejía Tiriquiz. Mejía is facing charges of sedition and aggravated attack for her alleged participation in an August 24, 2020, demonstration, according to…

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Officials inspect a crime scene in Guatemala City in 2013. High rates of street crime and violence make it hard to determine if victims are targeted for their work as journalists. (AFP/Johan Ordonez)

Searching for answers in murder cases amid violence and corruption in Guatemala

On June 25, unidentified assailants shot and killed Álvaro Aceituno López, director of Radio Ilusión in Coatepeque, a town in southeastern Guatemala. López often criticized local government officials when presenting the news and during guest appearances on other programs. But to date, CPJ has been unable to determine if Aceituno was killed for his work…

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CPJ

Defining success in the fight against impunity

For the second time this year, the U.N. Security Council took up the issue of protection of journalists. In a discussion today sponsored by the French and Guatemalan delegations, and open to NGOs, speaker after speaker and country after country hammered home the same essential facts: The vast majority of journalists murdered around the world…

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A soldier patrols a lake in the town of Panajachel, where journalist Lucía Escobar used to live. (AFP/Orlando Sierra)

Displaced by threats, old life gives way to new

For seven years I lived in Panajachel, a tourist town on the beautiful Atitlán Lake in Guatemala. There, my husband, Juan Miguel Arrivillaga, and I started a family and the independent news outlet Anti Magazine. We also hosted a radio program on the local station Radio Ati.

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Going beyond national borders to combat impunity

Combating impunity has been a long and difficult process, full of obstacles and problems. At the national level it has not been easy, so much of our work is carried out using the supranational tools that we helped develop. They began taking shape through international intergovernmental declarations, in conclusions reached by international legislative and judicial…

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