high-profile Mexican peace movement blamed the country's government Tuesday for the death of one of the group's most vocal members. Nepomuceno Moreno Nunez, 56, was shot Monday afternoon as he crossed a street in Hermosillo, Sonora, authorities said. Investigators collected nine shell casings from the scene. "For the death of Nepomuceno, we blame, by omission, federal and state authorities who did not respond to his requests for protection," the Movement for Peace with Justice and...

Relatives of political prisoners held in the National Bolivarian Intelligence Service (Sebin) and in the prison center of Ramo Verde urged President Hugo Chávez to ensure compliance with human rights of the population deprived of liberty, some of whom are seriously ill. At a press conference, Yajaira de Forero, the wife of former police chief Lázaro Forero, who was sentenced to 30 years in prison for the events of April 11, 2002, recalled the words of President Hugo...

Police in Ciudad Juarez, a northern border city regarded as Mexico’s murder capital, arrested a score of activists while they were painting crosses with the names of victims of violent crime. The “indignants of Ciudad Juarez” managed to paint about 100 black crosses at spots where some of the more than 9,000 victims of violence in Juarez were found slain over the past three years. The activists responded to a call by the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity, led by...

Reporters Without Borders today praised speedy action to solve last month’s robbery-murder in Mexico City last month of two women journalists and said it hoped the authorities would show the same efficiency in clearing up killings of other journalists targeted because of their work. Two men - Oscar Yair Quiñones Emmer (29) and Lázaro Hernández Ángeles (26) - were arrested on 30 September and 1 October suspected of killing journalists Ana María Marcela...

The decapitated body of María Elizabeth Macías, the editor of Primera Hora, a daily based in Nuevo Laredo (in the eastern state of Tamaulipas), was found on 24 September. Aged 39, she was the fourth woman journalist to be murdered in Mexico since the start of the year. The previous three women victims were former Televisa reporter Rocio González Trápaga and Ana María Marcela Yarce Viveros, the editor of the weekly magazine Contralínea, who were killed...

A controversial documentary that cast a harsh light on the Mexican judicial system won an Emmy on Monday night. The film, “Presumed Guilty,” showed the unjust prosecution of a Mexico City salesman, José Antonio Zúñiga, who was accused of a murder he did not commit and sentenced to 20 years in prison. In a ceremony from the Lincoln Center, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences announced that “Presumed Guilty” had won the Emmy for...

The bloodied bodies of a man and a woman were found hanging from a bridge in the northeast Mexican border town of Nuevo Laredo Tuesday, along with two posters left nearby warning social media users about reporting on the drug war. Bloggers who write about Mexico’s ongoing drug war have been threatened in the past, but this is believed to be the first time that users of social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook have been targeted by the cartels. The posters also called out by...

Two social network users, Gilberto Martínez Vera, 35, and María de Jesús Bravo Pagola, 34, have been detained in Xalapa, in the eastern state of Veracruz, since 25 August on charges of terrorism and sabotage for posting messages on Twitter and Facebook about the possibility of an organized crime attack on a Veracruz school. They are facing the possibility of a sentence of 3 to 30 years in prison, a fine equivalent to 750 days of their salaries and suspension of their...

In a press release, Human Rights Watch Director for the Americas Miguel Vivanco termed as "completely unacceptable" Venezuelan authorities' hostility towards Humberto Prado, the director of Venezuelan Observatory of Prisons (VOP), and other activists. Vivanco recalled that Prado was accused by Venezuelan Minister of Interior and Justice Tareck El Aissami of inciting inmates from prisons El Rodeo I and II, east Caracas, to rebellion. Soon later, Prado began receiving death...

"Every Sunday the beatings are worse, but they will have to kill us because we will continue going to mass.” Santiago de Cuba / August 21, 2011 At 7 a.m. the homes of five human rights defenders in three municipalities in Eastern Cuba were under siege by paramilitary forces and by pro government mobs: three in “Palma Soriano”, one in “Palmarito de Cauto”, and another one in “El Caney”, to prevent the Ladies in White and female supporters from...