Reporters Without Borders hopes for quick results from the investigation into journalist Fausto Valdivieso’s murder yesterday in Guayaquil. The motive is not yet known but press reports quoted local sources as saying he had been the target of a murder attempt 24 hours earlier and had received threats. A former employee of privately-owned TV stations Ecuavisa, Teleamazonas and TC Televisión, Valdivieso still worked intermittently as an independent journalist while pursuing...

Two cases have rightly fuelled the controversy about a decision to award Veracruz state governor Javier Duarte a prize for his supposed “commitment in the service of freedom of expression.” The first is the 38-year jail sentence that a man has just received for Proceso correspondent Regina Martínez’s April 2012 murder in Veracruz state. The second is Verónica Danell’s dismissal as Megacable TV presenter, which she has blamed on pressure from the...

Reporters Without Borders and the CERIGUA Journalists’ Observatory condemn journalist Jaime Napoleón Jarquín Duarte’s murder on 20 March in Ciudad Pedro de Alvarado, in the southeastern department of Jutiapa. The two partner organizations urge the authorities to carry out a rapid investigation in order to identify those responsible - both the perpetrators and the instigators - and bring them to justice. Jarquín, 63, was playing cards on the street with three...

Reporters Without Borders strongly denounces the violent acts, that can be considered barbaric, endured by Germán Uribe, a Colombian journalist and writer. The incident occurred on February 28, 2013 at his home in Subachoque in the region of Cundinamarca. He has since suspended his writing activity but hopes to work again once he recovers from his injuries. The organization calls on the authorities to shed light on the attack, fight against impunity and guarantee the freedom of...

Cuban dissident blogger Yoani Sanchez said in New York that she’s afraid of the reprisals in store for her when she returns to Cuba from an international tour she began last month after five years without being allowed to leave the island. “Afraid of going back? Yes, I’m very afraid of what will happen when I go back,” the blogger told a press conference at New York University, her second appearance in the United States after attending a symposium on Thursday at...

Reporting on the realities of Mexican life still carries enormous risk. Against this backdrop, Reporters Without Borders submitted recommendations on 4 March to the Human Rights Council of the United Nations (see document below), which will examine the case of Mexico during the 17th Universal Periodic Review (21 October - 1 November 2013). In the states of San Luis Potosí (north-center) and Tamaulipas (north-east), organized crime and local governments, the latter sometimes infiltrated...

Unknown men opened fire on the premises of a newspaper and a TV station in the early morning hours of March 6, according to the newspaper Milenio. The first attack was against the newspaper El Diario around 1 a.m. 15 minutes later a similar attack was made against Canal 44, according to El Diario. There were no injuries or deaths in the attacks, and so far no arrests - in spite of a security camera that recorded the vehicle used during the first attack. After the attacks, local and state...

An online journalist in northern Mexico was shot dead while he ate at a taco stand, the Associated Press reported. Jaime Guadalupe Gonzalez Dominguez was shot at least 17 times in the border town of Ojinaga in Chihuahua state on Sunday night, El Universal reported. Mexican magazine Proceso reported Dominguez was shot at least 18 times. The gunmen stole his camera. The journalist’s website, Ojinaga Noticias, described the attack as a “real shame” in what it said was...

Federal agents guarding the premises of the newspaper El Siglo de Torreón (Torreón Century), in the northern Mexican city of Torreón, Coahuila, came under attack on the afternoon of Monday, February 25, by a group of armed men. The uniformed agents were on patrol at the back of the newspaper’s offices when the attackers, who were in a passing vehicle, opened fire with AK-47s. Soon after the attack reinforcements arrived and a perimeter was set up. Several...

A newspaper in northern Mexico says five of its non-editorial employees were kidnapped briefly and released hours later. The Siglo de Torreon said on its Internet site that the abductions reflected the lack of security for newspaper employees in the violence-plagued region around the city of Torreon. The paper said abductors took two people who operated its online services, two employees of the advertising department and one administrative employee. It said the workers were released early...