Tha IAPA deplored the murder in Honduras of journalist Georgino Orellana of TVH television and issued an urgent call on the authorities to investigate to identify those responsible for this and five other such murders committed in the Central American country so far this year.

The IAPA called on the authorities of Colombia, Honduras and Mexico to fully investigate three murders committed at the weekend so as to determine the motives for the crimes and bring those guilty to justice.

Denunciation of political and administrative corruption and of the actions of paramilitary groups are the main motives in the cases of the murder of 59 journalists due to their work in Colombia between 1993 and 2009, a study on the subject shows.

The life of Enrique Villicaña Palomares had many facets – a lawyer by profession, a university lecturer, notary public over at least the last 10 years, public official recognized for the reorganization of the Morelia City Center from which he managed to remove all street vendors and relocate them elsewhere.

Paracho, in Michoacan state, is a small town populated by indigenous people and small farmers and characterized by hard work and migration. It was from Paracho that Ramón Angeles Zalpa, correspondent of the newspaper Cambio, disappeared on Tuesday, April 6.

A call by the IAPA for action in 88 cases of murder of journalists in the Americas from 1987 to date is to be sent to government officials of Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico and Peru, urging them to show greater political will to have the unpunished crimes fully solved.

The IAPA expressed great concern at a wave of murders of journalists in Honduras, the two latest on Friday bringing the total so far this month to five. It urged the authorities to act promptly and in an exemplary manner to bring those responsible to justice.

The IAPA expressed consternation at the spiraling violence against the press in Honduras and Mexico where seven journalists have been murdered so far this year. The organization called for greater diligence and concern by authorities in both countries just days before starting its midyear meeting in Aruba.

The IAPA expressed its alarm over the murder of Honduran journalist David Meza, the second homicide of a newsman there in less than 15 days. The organization called on authorities to conduct an urgent investigation into the motive and to bring the perpetrators to justice.

The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) today described as “a serious development, unprecedented in the Western Hemisphere” the abduction of eight Mexican journalists in the last two weeks from Reynosa, northern Tamaulipas state. The organization called on the government to act with urgency to rescue the victims from the hands of drug traffickers.

The justices of the Sixth Division of the High Court (STJ) rejected the Special Appeal no. 562727 of the Timón Attorney General’s Office that sought to reopen criminal proceedings against three persons accused of the murder of radio reporter Jorge Vieira da Costa on March 23, 200l in Timón, Maranhão. The court made its ruling on December 15, 2009 but it was not published in the Official Gazette until February 22, 2010. The Attorney General’s Office has not so far appealed the decision.

The Florencia Specialized Circuit Criminal Court in the Colombian province of Caquetá acquitted Tiberio Hernán Bocanegra, a member of the 61st Front of the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) guerrilla movement, who had been charged by the Public Prosecutor’s Office in November 2008 with having carried out the murder of José Duviel Vásquez, a reporter with La Voz de la Selva radio station.