13 Mar 12 | Americas, Index Index, minipost
A radio broadcaster has been killed in Sabá, northern Honduras, making him the 18th journalist to be killed in the country since 2010. Fausto Elio Hernández, host of The Voice of the News programme broadcast on local station Radio Alegre, was hacked to death by a machete-wielding attacker on 10 March.
While police have reportedly said the killing is not related to Hernández’s work as a journalist, Honduras has the second-highest murder rate for journalists in Latin America, after Mexico.
20 Jan 12 | Americas, Index Index, minipost
Honduran lawyer Jose Ricardo Rosales was shot dead by three hooded gunmen on 17 January, three days after he was quoted in newspaper Diario Tiempo, accusing police officers in the northern town of Tela of torturing prisoners. The Honduras College of Lawyers claim that 74 lawyers have been killed in the past three years in the country.
12 Jan 12 | Americas, Index Index, minipost
An independent journalist and human rights campaigner in Honduras has received several death threats following her involvement in a free expression march last month. Itsmania Pineda Platero was told “We’ll skin you alive, bitch!” in one of four death threats over three days. During one of the calls, there was the sound of a gun being loaded in the background. Platero walked at the forefront of the “Journalism for life and free expression” march on 13 December, which was violently dispersed by soldiers and members of the presidential guard.
12 Sep 11 | Index Index, minipost
Medardo Flores, a Honduran radio journalist who supported former President Manuel Zelaya, was gunned down on the night of 8 September, joining the long list of journalists who have been killed since Zelaya’s forced exile from the country in a June 2009 coup. Regional finance manager of the pro-Zelaya Broad Front for Popular Resistance (FARP), Flores was shot just two days after another leading FARP figure, Emo Sadloo, was assassinated. Flores’ death brings the number of Honduran journalists killed in the past 18 months to 15.
