(PFC/IFEX) – On the night of 26 November 2003, journalist Germán Antonio Rivas was shot and killed. He was the managing director of Corporación Maya Visión-Channel 7 television station, which broadcasts from the western city of Santa Rosa de Copán, on the border with Guatemala. Rivas is the first journalist to have been killed in […]
(PFC/IFEX) – On the night of 26 November 2003, journalist Germán Antonio Rivas was shot and killed. He was the managing director of Corporación Maya Visión-Channel 7 television station, which broadcasts from the western city of Santa Rosa de Copán, on the border with Guatemala. Rivas is the first journalist to have been killed in Honduras.
An unknown individual used a revolver with a silencer to shoot Rivas in the head as the journalist was parking his car in front of the station’s offices. Four hours after his murder, his body was still lying on top of a car, awaiting the arrival of forensic investigators.
Copán-based journalist René Rojas told the Committee for Free Expression (Comité por la Libre Expresión, C-Libre), “Everything happened so quickly. We have all been affected. Germán led a simple life. He took an interest in social issues and handled information responsibly as a journalist . . . This has impacted all of us and we are frightened.”
Rojas, a correspondent for the national radio station Radio América, based in the capital, said that apparently no one saw who shot Rivas. “When we found out what happened, we rushed to the scene of the crime and saw his body surrounded by a pool of blood. We believe there are witnesses but they must be afraid. Assassins usually leave someone behind at the scene of the crime and perhaps that is why no one wants to speak,” Rojas speculated.
