Dumesky Kersaint never flinched when it came to investigating violence in his gang-controlled suburb of Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. On the morning of April 16, the 31-year-old radio reporter left before dawn to cover a previous night’s shooting near his home in Carrefour-Feuilles. He never came back. Several hours after setting out, Kersaint’s body was found…
When Hugo Bustíos Saavedra was killed in 1988, Peru’s government was embroiled in conflict with leftist guerilla groups, many civil liberties had been suspended, and efforts to seek justice in the journalist’s death seemed futile. CPJ and other press freedom groups unsuccessfully tried for years to pressure Peru’s government to investigate Bustíos’ murder, including by asking…
CPJ’s 2023 Global Impunity Index lists the top 12 countries where the murderers of journalists go free. But impunity knows no borders. The mosaic below shows the faces of slain journalists around the world. Beneath each journalist’s photo is the location of their death. Click the images for more details about these unsolved cases. (Photo grid by Geoff McGhee)
From pariah to potential partner. That’s how far Saudi Arabia has come for President Joe Biden in the five years since Riyadh sent a death squad to butcher journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The administration’s ongoing rehabilitation of the petrodollar kingdom and its de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, widely known as MBS, seems to…
By Arlene Getz/CPJ Editorial Director The persistent lack of justice for murdered reporters is a major threat to press freedom. Ten years after the United Nations declared an international day to end impunity for crimes against journalists – and more than 30 years after CPJ began documenting these killings – almost 80% of their killings…
At least six journalists have been kidnapped and released in Haiti over the past eight months as gangs have grown in strength since the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, with the groups forming alliances and calling for the armed overthrow of the government. Since February, CPJ has documented the murder of one journalist, several reporters forced to flee their…
The smears began the day Christian Ulate began representing jailed Guatemalan journalist José Rubén Zamora: tweets accusing the lawyer of being a leftist or questioning his legal credentials. He began to fear he was being surveilled. Ulate had taken over the case in August 2022 from two other lawyers, Romeo Montoya García and Mario Castañeda,…
Miami, October 6, 2023—The Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned about the criminal defamation suit filed by the owner of the rum company Rhum Barbancourt against the independent news website AyiboPost and its editor-in-chief, Widlore Mérancourt, and calls on Haitian authorities to repeal the country’s punitive criminal defamation laws, the organization said Friday. On September…
Mexico City, October 6, 2023—Mexican authorities must credibly and transparently investigate the killing of journalist Jesús Gutiérrez Vergara who was shot dead in a city near the U.S. border, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Friday. Gutiérrez, the founder and editor of Notiface, a Facebook-based news website, was talking with four off-duty policemen in the…
The FBI used a search warrant to raid the home of freelance journalist Tim Burke on May 8, 2023, in Tampa, Fla., seizing most of his electronic devices, after Burke obtained outtakes of a 2022 Fox News interview by Tucker Carlson with the rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West. The Committee to Protect Journalists signed on…