Calls for government action to end impunity
Miami (June 16, 2010).—The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) today condemned the murder of journalist Luis Arturo Mondragón in Honduras – the seventh newsman to be killed there this year – and called on the authorities to identify the motive and bring the responsible to justice.
The chairman of the IAPA’s Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, Robert Rivard, offered his condolences to the family and colleagues of Mondragón, news director of Canal 19 in the town of El Paraíso (southeast of the capital Tegucigalpa) who was murdered on Monday night after he finished broadcasting and was sitting outside his home with his son.
Rivard, editor of the San Antonio Express-News, Texas, said, “We are watching with ongoing concern and alarm the degree of violence against the press in Honduras which, despite the government’s goodwill to solve the crimes, is immersed in a climate of impunity.”
Mondragón is the seventh journalist murdered in Honduras this year following Georgino Orellana (April 20), Manuel Juárez and José Bayardo Mairena (March 26), Nahúm Palacios (March 14), David Meza (March 11) and Joseph A. Hernández Ochoa (March 1). None of these cases has been solved. 2009 murders that are missing the identities of perpetrators and masterminds are Bernardo Rivera Paz (March 13), Santiago Rafael Munguía (March 31) and Gabriel Fino Noriega (July 3).
According to local news media, Mondragón, 53, had received threats after reporting on corruption by local officials and politicians.
In April this year the IAPA recommended to Honduras President Porfirio Lobo concrete options for the implementation of legal and judicial tools to combat the spiraling crime wave against journalists. These included setting up a system of international observers with the support of the United Nations, creating special prosecutor’s offices to investigate crimes committed against freedom of expression, pushing for legal reforms to establish a special jurisdiction to deal with such offenses, and amending the Penal Code to increase penalties in cases of violation of freedom of expression.
The IAPA is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the defense and promotion of freedom of the press and of expression in the Americas. It is made up of more than 1,300 print publications from throughout the Western Hemisphere and is based in Miami, Florida. The IAPA Impunity Project is funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and has the mission of combating violence against journalists and lessening the impunity surrounding the majority of such crimes. For more information please go to http://www.sipiapa.org; http://www.impunidad.com
