Paris, 15 October 2013 Dr. Juan Manuel Santos President of Colombia Mr. Eduardo Montealegre Lynett Prosecutor-General Maj. Gen. Rodolfo Palomino López National Police Director Dear President Santos, Dear Prosecutor-General Montealegre, Dear National Police Director Palomino, Reporters Without Borders, an international organization that defends freedom of information, urges you to intervene quickly to guarantee the safety of four journalists - Claudia López, Gonzalo...

Reporters Without Borders has registered more than 20 attacks on journalists by both police and demonstrators during a national strike by farm workers, miners and public sector employees that began on 19 August. As a result, Reporters Without Borders wrote to President Juan Manuel Santos today voicing concern about the ability of media personnel to work safely and calling on the authorities take whatever measures are necessary to protect reporters during demonstrations. President Juan Manuel...

Reporters Without Borders has registered more than 20 attacks on journalists by both police and demonstrators during a national strike by farm workers, miners and public sector employees that began on 19 August. As a result, Reporters Without Borders wrote to President Juan Manuel Santos today voicing concern about the ability of media personnel to work safely and calling on the authorities take whatever measures are necessary to protect reporters during demonstrations. President Juan Manuel...

President Raúl Castro Ruz Head of Cuba’s Council of State Chairman of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) Dear President Castro, When you were sworn in as chairman of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) for one year at the end of the recent CELAC summit in the Chilean capital of Santiago, you undertook to act “with total respect for international law, the United Nations charter and the fundamental principles governing...

Dear President-Elect Peña Nieto, You are ending a European tour with a visit to Paris before being sworn in as your country’s next president on 1 December. Tomorrow you will meet with French President François Hollande and the next day you will address the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development on "Changes in Mexico and their role in the panorama of global change." Will the changes your refer to include the tragic toll of a decade of extreme...

Practice journalism in Colombia and Latinamerica is a hazardous activity. The journalists, as well as the campaigners for human rights, the trade unionists, the displaced persons among others, were all groups that the armed conflicts traditionally affect. Therefore, the State has as a duty to give a special protection to them. Despite this constitutional guarantee the situation of the Colombian journalists remains at risk: Colombia is the country in Latin America with the major number of...

ECUADOREAN PRESIDENT Rafael Correa, an autocratic acolyte of Hugo Chavez who is usually and deservedly ignored outside of his own country, will get a little attention Thursday when he hosts Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. As he basks in the aura of a more notorious international pariah, allow us to recount what Mr. Correa really ought to be known for: the most comprehensive and ruthless assault on free media underway in the Western Hemisphere. On Friday, after the Iranian’s...

An end to prison terms and exorbitant fines for crimes of defamation, slander and libel remains a key objective for the overall improvement in freedom of information in the southern countries of South America. In this respect, Argentina and Uruguay have shown the way. However, the step remains to be taken by Ecuador, which is still under the influence of the El Universo case, Bolivia, Colombia and Chile. Decriminalization is urgent in Peru, where a promising reform of the criminal code...

After decades of poking around crime scenes, digging into conspiracies and hanging out with cops and politicians, columnist Miguel Angel Lopez had earned his stripes as journalistic alpha dog of the crime and corruption beat in this steamy port on the Gulf of Mexico. But even Lopez hardly could have imagined the speed with which hit men would take his life and those of his wife and 21-year-old son. It was 6 a.m. on a June day when two vehicles arrived at the journalist's custard-yellow...

The conviction of President Rafael Correa's critics for criminal defamation violates Ecuador's international human rights obligations and should be overturned on appeal, Human Rights Watch said today. Ecuador should abolish the defamation provisions in its criminal code, Human Rights Watch said. On July 20, 2011, a judge in Guayas province sentenced each of the four to three years in prison and ordered a total of US$40 million in fines against the men and the newspaper, El Universo, based in...