SAN PEDRO SULA, Honduras - They are coming to America because a good job here means sewing underwear in a sweatshop for $47 a week. They are leaving neighborhoods where you can walk down block after block of abandoned houses spray-painted with gang graffiti, with collapsed roofs and jungle plants sprouting in the living rooms. They are traveling 1,400 miles with hardly any luggage from a bus station controlled by an extortion ring and used for trafficking women and contraband cigarettes; last...

Christophe Deloire Reporters Without Borders secretary-general 47 rue Vivienne 75002 Paris Paris, 9 July 2014 Interior Minister Arturo Corrales Secretaría de Estado en el Despacho de Seguridad Aldea el Ocotal, Antiguo local de la Academía Nacional de Policía Tegucigalpa, Honduras Dear Minister, I would like to draw your attention to the repeated acts of intimidation to which our Honduras correspondent, , has been subjected. Reporters Without Borders is an...

For the first time ever, Reporters Without Borders is publishing a list of profiles of “100 information heroes” for World Press Freedom Day (3 May).Through their courageous work or activism, these “100 heroes” help to promote the freedom enshrined in article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the freedom to “to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” They put their ideals in the service of...

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...

(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...

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...

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,...

Reporters Without Borders calls for justice for journalists who have been persecuted or killed and an overhaul of the entire Honduran media after the parliamentary elections that are due to be held on 24 November. Represented by an observer on the ground, Reporters Without Borders hopes that key issues that are important to the population, such as agrarian reform, environmental conflicts, a purge of the police and obviously human rights, will be the vehicles of a new pluralism and the...

Reporters Without Borders condemns police harassment and violence against journalists amid a wave of protests by students disputing the preliminary results from last weekend’s presidential election. “We call for an end to acts of intimidation and violence against journalists and we urge both the government and the opposition to respect their work,” Reporters Without Borders said. “The authorities must guarantee the safety of journalists and must punish the police...

During the Heritage Foundation's recent event Insecurity in Honduras and the Upcoming Elections: What's at Stake for Central America, panelists Ambassador Roger Noriega of Vision Americas, Eric Olson of the Woodrow Wilson Center, and Joseph Humire of the Center for a Secure Free Society laid out their concerns about the upcoming electoral processes in Honduras and El Salvador. Ambassador Noriega pointed to a "new strain" of Latin American populism that seeks the...