Recently in Honduras Category

Police surveillance in Tegucigalpa. (AP/Eduardo Verdugo)

 

By Ela Stapley

Five journalists were targeted and killed last month in Honduras. The country is now one of the world's most dangerous places to be a reporter. What lies behind the attacks and what is the future for journalism in one of the most violent countries in Latin America?

On March 26, José Alemán, a reporter for Diario Tiempo and Radio América, received a threatening phone call warning him that he was being "looked for". Later that day armed men broke into his house. He was not home but they caught up with him in the street. He managed to flee down an ally and get to a police station, local media reports. After police told him they could not protect him he left the country.

HONDURAS -The Garifuna community radio station Faluma Bimetu ("Sweet Coconut") based in Triunfo de la Cruz was burnt down in the early morning hours of Wednesday January 6.

Unknown armed individuals proceeded to loot the station's radio equipment and it's not the first time the radio has been attacked and its equipment stolen. So what's going on?

In 2002 unknown people stole the transmitter and other key tools for radio transmission. The Garifuna people have been exposed to a slow process of assimilation into the dominant culture through the mass media - monopolies that are in the hands of figures who are well known throughout the country as manipulators of information.

              

Newspaper readers across the Americas have been asked to join the Inter American Press Association (IAPA)'s campaign to demand justice in the cases of murdered journalists. A growing list of newspapers is participating in this online banner campaign to focus attention on killings that go unpunished in the region. Just this past week, several journalists and their families have been fatally targeted in three countries.