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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.
A 26-year-old radio station director was killed yesterday in Honduras. Nery Jeremias Orellana was stopped and shot in the head by masked gunmen as he rode home from work on a motorcycle. He died soon after he was taken to a local hospital. A supporter of recently ousted President Manuel Zelaya, Orellana was head of Radio Joconguera de Candelaria and was a member of the National Resistance Front.
Three gunmen killed Channel 24 television owner Luis Ernesto Mendoza Cerrato last week. Gunmen also wounded newspaper manager Manuel Acosta Medina two days as he drove home. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 11 journalists have been killed in Honduras since March 2010, at least three weer murdered in retaliation for their work. Although police are investigating whether the two crimes were assassinations, a CPJ report in 2010 found consistently poor and negligent investigative work into the killings.
The board president of a Honduran radio station was shot in the leg on 13 March by two people who disagreed with his editorial policies. He was hospitalised but his condition has been described as “stable”. Franklin Melendez is the president of the board of community radio station La Voz de Zacate Grande, which has been targeted for supporting local peasant groups in a land dispute. It is claimed that the identity of his attackers is known, but neither the police or the judicial authorities have taken any action in response. The police asked the station “not to make a fuss”.