In a letter to the editor of the New York Times, the executive secretary of opposition umbrella group Unified Democratic Panel (MUD), José Guillermo Aveledo, expressed his disagreement with the statements issued by Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in an op-ed article published by the newspaper earlier this week entitled "Venezuela: A call for peace." Aveledo rejected Maduro's claims that the crisis facing Venezuela has been fabricated by the opposition and is the...

On Thursday, a students' march from the Central University of Venezuela (UCV) intended to arrive to the Economic Vice presidency office in La Campiña, Caracas, to protest against shortage and economic crisis. State security forces prevented demonstrators from getting out of the university campus. In addition, armed gangs attacked the university and the students.

Reporters Without Borders welcomes the conviction of three men for the murder of Alfredo Villatoro, a journalist who hosted a show on radio HRN and coordinated its programming. He was , six days after being kidnapped from his home. A Marvin Alonso Gómez and two brothers, Osman Fernando and Edgar Francisco Osorio Argujo, on 25 March, exactly 22 months after their arrest on 25 May 2012. Accepting the detailed evidence presented by the prosecution, which included DNA identification and...

(Bogotá) - Paramilitary successor groups have abducted and disappeared scores, and possibly hundreds, of residents of the largely Afro-Colombian port of Buenaventura, Human Rights Watch said in a report and released today. Thousands of residents have been fleeing their homes in the city each year, making Buenaventura the municipality with the highest level of ongoing forced displacement in today. The 30-page report, “,” documents how many of the city’s neighborhoods...

Violence and threats to many Mexican journalists reporting along the U.S. border has led to less investigative and crime reporting, a phenomenon described as "self-censorship," the UA researchers found. From intimidation threats to assassinations, the daily danger faced by many Mexican journalists is the focus of a newly published University of Arizona research study. The study ranks Mexico as one of the most dangerous places in the world for reporters to work. "Silencing...

The so-called “Art School, President General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte”, named after the former far-right dictator who ruled Chile from 1973 to 1990, has been recruiting students ahead of its opening on March 28. The institute's site, in the town of Ancúd on Chile's remote Chiloé archipelago, 980 km south of Santiago, has been flanked by a number of conspicuous swastika-bearing posters advertising the school in recent days, local press have reported. The school's...

Victims’ families, government officials and diplomats gathered in Buenos Aires at the former site of the Israeli embassy to mark the 22nd anniversary of the terrorist bombing there. “The terrorist goes against the Koran, the Torah and the New Testament,” Israel’s ambassador to Buenos Aires, Dorit Shavit, told the gathering on Tuesday. “The State of Israel state speaks out against those that brandish a religious flag with fanaticism.” The March 17, 1992...

Chilean President Michelle Bachelet has reaffirmed that nobody, included individuals or countries, is entitled to overthrown a legitimate elected president through violence. Bachelet's comment came with respect to a wave of protests staged in Venezuela against President Nicolás Maduro in recent weeks. Amidst reports of torture and violation of dissenters' human rights, Bachelet told Reuters, "We hope at all times for the respect of human rights and the Constitution, and hope that...

US Secretary of State John Kerry called on Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro Thursday to “end this terror campaign” against his own people. In one of his strongest statements yet after more than a month of student and opposition protests against Maduro's government, Kerry said the international community needed to “focus on Venezuela appropriately.” “We are engaged now with trying to find a way to get the Maduro government to engage with their citizens, to...

(Washington, DC) - The decision by Honduras’s Attorney General’s Office to create a special unit to investigate killings allegedly linked to land disputes in the Bajo Aguán region is an important step toward tackling widespread impunity there, Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch called for such a unit in its February 2014 report titled “.” Human Rights Watch documented the systemic failure of Honduran authorities to properly investigate a wave of...