Reporters Without Borders reiterates its call for the release of , a writer who completes a year in detention today and who began a blog in 2008 called that was openly critical of the government. Santiesteban-Prats was arrested on 28 February 2013 to begin serving the five-year jail sentence on trumped-up charges of “home violation” and “injuries” that he received at the end of a hasty and arbitrary trial on 8 December 2012. No hard evidence was produced in support of...

The Organization of American States (OAS) and its member countries should proceed with a meeting on the situation in , Human Rights Watch said today. The OAS should use the meeting to address the human rights violations committed in response to widespread public demonstrations since February 12, 2014. The OAS should not allow such an important opportunity to engage on human rights issues at the heart of the situation in Venezuela to be derailed. On February 25, the government of Panama asked...

The Honduran Congress should conduct a transparent, impartial, and participatory process for electing the country’s next human rights ombudsman, Human Rights Watch said today. A new ombudsman must be chosen by March 14, 2014, when the current ombudsman’s six-year term ends. The ombudsman directs the National Human Rights Commission (El Comisionado Nacional de los Derechos Humanos, or CONADEH). “Unfortunately, in recent years the National Human Rights Commission has too often...

It was a well-publicised event: Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez had previously announced he was prepared to risk and march through the streets of Caracas. On Tuesday he voluntarily handed himself over to police but not before urging tens of thousands of anti-government protesters to remain firm. “Don’t leave the streets…we must take up our right to but we must do it peacefully. Brother, I ask you and every Venezuelan who wants change…we must inform ourselves,...

Police in Mexico arrested on Sunday two members of the armed Basque separatist group ETA who belonged to a unit that killed 18 people, the Spanish government said. The pair, a man and a woman who have been on the run from the authorities for over two decades, were detained in the Pacific tourist resort of Puerto Vallarta by Mexican police, the Interior Ministry said in a statement. Juan Jesus Narvaez Goni and Itziar Alberdi joined an ETA unit in 1990 that was charged with carrying out...

The journalist Gregorio Jiménez was killed and his body was found buried on Tuesday in the municipality of Las Chopas, Veracruz. The Attorney General's Office confirmed this afternoon that Veracruz state agents found the body of the reporter for Notisur and Liberal South in a grave in the Las Choapas during a special operation. Two other bodies were found in mass graves in the same place. Four people were arrested in that area of the state of Veracruz, who confessed that they were hired...

San Salvador (AFP) - A former leftist guerrilla narrowly missed victory in El Salvador's presidency race Sunday, and will now face a run-off vote with a conservative rival, according to official results. With 81 percent of the vote counted, ruling leftist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) candidate Salvador Sanchez Ceren had nearly 49 percent of the vote, just missing the 50 percent needed to avoid a runoff. He will now face former San Salvador mayor Norman Quijano, 67, of the...

The presidential candidate from El Salvador's right-wing opposition Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) party is extending his narrow lead in the race to win February's election, according to a poll released on Monday. ARENA candidate Norman Quijano has 35.5 percent of voters' support, while former guerilla commander Salvador Sanchez, candidate for the ruling Farabundo Marti Front for National Liberation, is close behind with 31.8 percent, according to the survey by polling firm Mitofsky....

Mexican armed forces will take over security in a large swath of a western state where shootouts between vigilante groups and drug traffickers erupted over the weekend, a top official has announced. Miguel Angel Osorio Chong, the Mexican interior secretary, said federal forces with support from Michoacán state police would patrol an area in the state known as Tierra Caliente, the home base of the Knights Templar drug cartel. "Be certain we will contain the violence in...

Richard Blanco, an opposition legislator and deputy president of opposition Alianza Bravo Pueblo party, stressed that the number of violent deaths in Venezuela has skyrocketed by 483% since Chavezism took office in 1998. He claimed that high crime rates have been recorded even though Chavezism has implemented 22 different security plans and changed the minister of the interior and justice 12 times. The politician explained that some 4,000-5,000 people died annually in the country as a...