Reporters Without Borders calls on the ministry of justice and human rights to investigate freelance photographer Brian Palacio’s detention by members of the gendarmerie on 30 December in Buenos Aires, during which he was beaten and threatened. “The by the security forces during 2013 cannot continue,” Reporters Without Borders said. “The National Gendarmerie has repeatedly been criticized for its methods and must be held to account for this latest case of mistreatment....

The general director of the Scientific, Criminal and Forensic Investigation Agency (Cicpc), José Gregorio Sierralta, confirmed on Thursday the detention of seven individuals allegedly involved in the robbery and murder of Venezuelan actress and former beauty queen Mónica Spear and her partner, Thomas Berry. The individuals have also been held accountable for the injuries caused to the couple's five-year-old daughter. The shooter was identified as 19-year-old Jean Carlos Colina...

The Honduran government is putting human rights activists at risk by failing to repudiate dangerous remarks by a senior military officer, Human Rights Watch said today. An army colonel recently claimed that Annie Bird, co-director of the US-based nongovernmental organization Rights Action, was working to destabilize the Bajo Aguán region, where land disputes have led to violence. The commander of Operation Xatruch III, a military-police task force based in the Colón province,...

The Argentine Senate promoted Maj. Gen. César Milani, the commander in chief of the Armed Forces, to lieutenant general on December 18, 2013, despite allegations by victims and human rights groups that he had participated in serious human rights abuses during the military dictatorship, from 1976 to 1983. The credible allegations of abuses implicating Milani cast a serious doubt on his ability to head the Armed Forces of Argentina, Human Rights Watch said. Instead of promoting Milani...

La Paz, Jan 1 (EFE).- Bolivia will have a nuclear power industry in the near future, President Evo Morales said Wednesday during a military ceremony in the central region of Cochabamba. "I want to tell you, we are not far... from having atomic energy because we have sufficient prime material and we have the right," the head of state said. Bolivia has uranium deposits, though they have yet to be quantified or thoroughly evaluated. Morales said in late October that Bolivia was...

Reporters Without Borders condemns the physical attacks on journalists that have occurred in the course of demonstrations in several provinces since the start of December by police officers demanding more pay. “We urge the demonstrators and the police to respect the work of journalists, who have often been the in connection with their coverage of the protests,” Reporters Without Borders said. We also call on the authorities to ensure that journalists are protected and to punish...

The family of Zoila Márquez Chiu, a journalist with the Linea Informativa news website who disappeared on 7 December, has confirmed that she returned to her home in the central state of Zacatecas on 23 December. She was missing for 17 days. “We are relieved to learn that Márquez is back with her family,” Reporters Without Borders said. “Officials say she did not suffer any attack but the circumstances of her disappearance are still largely unexplained. It is...

Reporters Without Borders condemns the physical attacks on journalists that have occurred in the course of demonstrations in several provinces since the start of December by police officers demanding more pay. “We urge the demonstrators and the police to respect the work of journalists, who have often been the targets of reprisals in connection with their coverage of the protests,” Reporters Without Borders said. We also call on the authorities to ensure that journalists are...

A homemade bomb badly damaged journalist Edvan Ríos Chanca’s home in Huancayo, in the central region of Junín, at dawn yesterday, shaking but not injuring its four inhabitants, one of them a child, according to regional newspapers and the Press and Society Institute (IPYS), which defends freedom of expression and information. “We condemn this attack and demand a full investigation into its origin and perpetrators,” Reporters Without Borders said. “Some...

Information published by ABC regarding negotiations between Nicolás Maduro's staff-when he was foreign minister-in an FMLN drug trafficking operation in El Salvador, has corroborated suspicions that existed in Venezuelan political and diplomatic circles. "This news confirms what many already knew about the significant and growing presence of drug trafficking in Venezuela and its important relations with the top echelon in the government and the Armed Forces," former...