Honduras

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has adopted a precautionary measure in favor of Honduran journalist Julio Ernesto Alvarado, who was ordered to stop working as a journalist for 16 months after he reported on alleged wrongdoing by a university dean.

PEN International talks to Honduran writer and former Interior Minister Victor Meza about the unintended gains of the 2009 coup for culture, creativity and resistance in Honduras.

On 17 October 2014, journalist and founding member of PEN Honduras, Julio Ernesto Alvarado, appeared along with other journalists before the Supreme Court of Honduras in a final attempt to fight the reinstatement of a 16-month ban on practising journalism.

The Penal Appeals Court in the capital Tegucigalpa has ruled that a 16-month journalism ban against Julio Ernesto Alvarado, originally handed down in December 2013 as a part of a sentence for criminal defamation, should be reinstated.

A Tegucigalpa-based high court announced it will hear a criminal defamation action against David Romero Ellner, the head of Radio Globo. The lawsuit could result in a sentence of up to 15 years in jail for Romero and the closure of Radio y TV Globo, one of Honduras’ most popular opposition broadcasters.

Nery Francisco Soto Torres was shot to death on the evening of 14 August in front of his home. Soto had recently reported on the rationing of electricity, and corruption amongst government workers.

Reporters Yanina Romero, Carlos Martínez and Lourdes Ramírez have been getting telephone death threats ever since they reported alleged corruption at a local hospital in early July.

Community radio reporters are being tried on sedition charges at the same time that Herlyn Espinal, a TV journalist based in the northwestern city of San Pedro Sula, has been found dead some 48 hours after going missing.

The violent crackdown and censorship that marked the first few months after the coup have been followed ever since by constant violations of human rights and media rights.

RSF hopes that the proposed new law for protection of journalists takes account of all news and information providers, including those working for community media, who are often the targets of threats and violence.

Passage by the Honduras Congress of a law for the protection of journalists was welcomed by the Inter American Press Association which called it “a step forward to end violence in the country.”

Community radio journalist Hernán Cruz Barnica was killed in the department of Copán on 28 May and disc jockey Óscar Anthony Torres Martínez was murdered in Olancho department on 1 June 2014. These are the first journalists to be killed in the country since the inauguration of President Juan Orlando Hernández in January 2014.

Reporters Without Borders condemns the censorship of Suelte la lengua (Talk freely), a programme that Canal 6 TV has not broadcast since 15 May. The programme’s hosts have repeatedly been censored by Canal 6’s own management.

Channel 11 employees, who were on shift at 11 p.m. on 30 April 2014, were surprised by projectiles being set off outside the station’s building, which is located in San Pedro Sula in the north of Honduras.

Carlos Hilario Mejía Orellana, who had received threats in the past and who was head of sales and marketing for Radio Progreso, was stabbed to death in his home in Yoro department, Honduras, on 11 April 2014.

PEN Canada and the International Human Rights Program at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law call on officials to tie human rights obligations to Canada’s proposed free trade agreement with Honduras, particularly the surge in violence against journalists who cover organized crime and government corruption.