Miami, May 20, 2019– The Committee to Protect Journalists today called on Colombian lawmakers to cease their harassment of New York Times Andes Bureau Chief Nicholas Casey and local press freedom organization, Foundation for Press Freedom (FLIP), and to ensure that journalists can report safely in the country.
A civil defamation lawsuit filed in a U.S. court by former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe Vélez against journalist Daniel Coronell is the latest broadside in a long and bitter dispute pitting one of Colombia’s most powerful politicians against an investigative reporter.
Mexico City, May 17, 2019–Mexican authorities must immediately undertake a credible and transparent investigation into the killing of Francisco Romero Díaz, a reporter who was shot dead yesterday in Playa del Carmen, a beachside resort in the southern Mexican state of Quintana Roo, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.
On May 8, 2019, a gunman shot and injured camera operator René Pérez while the journalist was covering a protest march in Cuernavaca, the capital of Mexico’s southern Morelos state, according to news reports. A local businessman and a union leader, the gunman’s targets, were killed in the attack, according to those reports.
A year after disputed national elections in Venezuela, and with access to information growing ever-scarcer, the country remains in a political and economic crisis. Conditions for the press have deteriorated further since January, when Juan Guaidó, the head of the opposition-led national assembly, declared himself interim president.
New York May 13, 2019–The Committee to Protect Journalists today condemned a raid by San Francisco police on the home of freelance journalist Bryan Carmody, and called on authorities to immediately return electronic devices, documents, and other seized property.
Bogotá, May 13, 2019 — Colombian authorities should conduct a swift and comprehensive investigation into the killing of documentary filmmaker Mauricio Lezama Rengifo and ensure those responsible are brought to justice, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.
New York, May 10, 2019–The Committee to Protect Journalists today condemned a cyberattack on Mexicanos Contra La Corrupción y Impunidad (MCCI), a Mexican nonprofit news outlet that publishes in-depth investigations into corruption in Mexico and Latin America.
When Andrés Manuel López Obrador won Mexico’s presidential elections last year with a promise to drastically cut the millions of dollars the government spends on press advertising each year, it appeared to signal the end to an opaque system that has been criticized as a way for governments to encourage favorable coverage.
Miami, May 8, 2019–The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes the sentencing on May 6 of former paramilitary fighters Alejandro Cárdenas Orozco and Jesús Emiro Pereira Rivera for the kidnapping, rape, and torture of Colombian journalist Jineth Bedoya Lima in 2000.