Miami (April 9, 2013).—An attack on Honduras female journalist Fidelina Sandoval was sharply criticized today by the Inter American Press Association (IAPA), which called on the authorities to investigate it and determine who was responsible, so as to ensure her safety and that of her family.
Sandoval, 24, a reporter with the Globo TV television channel in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa, told local media and international news agencies that she was shot at yesterday morning as she was on her way to work. She said that as she was about to cross the road a person sitting alongside the driver of a pickup truck fired at her. She was unharmed.
The chairman of the IAPA’s Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, Claudio Paolillo, urged the Honduran authorities “to ensure the journalist’s safety and carry out a prompt investigation into the incident.”
Sandoval has worked at the TV channel for two years, covering an agrarian conflict in the Valle del Bajo Aguán region in northeastern Honduras which in the last three years has shaken the area and according to the Human Rights Public Prosecutor’s Office has left 78 people dead and eight missing. She also has been reporting on a clean-up of the police force, begun after allegations of corruption. “That’s where the problem might be,” she told the French news agency AFP in reference to a possible motive for the attack.
Paolillo, editor of the Montevideo, Uruguay, weekly Búsqueda, reminded Honduras’ President Porfirio Lobo of his public commitment made last year to pursue reforms of the investigation of crimes against journalists, ensure their protection and bring those responsible to justice in special courts. Lobo took part in the Conference on Security, Protection and Solidarity for Freedom of Expression organized by the IAPA and the Honduras Association of News Media (AMC) held August 9-10, 2012 in the Honduras capital.
Paolillo also cited a resolution on Honduras adopted at the recent half-yearly meeting of the IAPA in which it was stated that in the Central American country “there continue to be reports of attacks upon journalists and social communicators and these are carried out in a climate of total impunity, which inevitably leads to self-censorship.”
According to statistics compiled by the IAPA 21 journalists have been murdered in Honduras since 2009, the majority of these crimes continuing to go unpunished.
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. For more information please go to http://www.sipiapa.org.
