Reporters Sans Frontières

Reporters Without Borders is astonished to learn that Marco Joel Álvarez Barahona, also known as El Unicornio” (The Unicorn), was acquitted by a court in the northern city of La Ceiba on 31 October of being the main perpetrator of last year’s murder of radio journalist David Meza Montesinos.

The often violent response to the Occupy Wall Street campaign that is growing in the United States and elsewhere is affecting the freedom to inform. Reporters Without Borders [campaigning for press freedom] condemns the arrests of reporters in recent weeks, especially in New York where the police assume the right to decide who are journalists.

Reporters Without Borders shares the concern that the Chilean Union of Photographers and Cameramen has expressed about the possibility of more violence against media personnel by the security forces, especially the carabinero militarized police, during the large protests that are expected to take place today and tomorrow in response to calls from the student movement.

Reporters Without Borders shares the concern that the Chilean Union of
Photographers and Cameramen has expressed about the possibility of more
violence against media personnel by the security forces, especially
carabineros militarized police, during the protests that are expected
to take place today and tomorrow in response to calls from the student
movement.

The often violent response to the Occupy Wall Street campaign that is growing in the United States and elsewhere is affecting the freedom to inform. Reporters Without Borders condemns the arrests of reporters in recent weeks, especially in New York where the police assume the right to decide who are journalists.

The broadcasts of TV and radio stations owned by Norte Visión Satelital, a media company based in the northern city of Salta, have been seriously disrupted by the deliberate destruction of an antenna by persons unknown on 3 October. Other regional broadcast media have been affected by this act of sabotage, the fourth against the company since the start of the year.

On the eve of the 9th World Day Against the Death Penalty, Reporters Without Borders and the Paris-based NGO Together Against the Death Penalty (ECPM) would like to point out that being a journalist, editing a website or keeping a blog can still expose a person to the possibility of the death penalty in some countries.

Reporters Without Borders urges the Chilean congress to reject a government
bill which, in response to a ninth-month-old wave of protests by students
and others,
would violate basic rights by criminalizing the expression of opinions in
public. It also contains disastrous provisions for journalists covering
protests.

The concern that Reporters Without Borders expressed about Honduras’ readmission to the Organization of American States is as relevant as ever after the emergence of new media cases involving two TV journalists – Mario Castro Rodríguez and Edgardo Antonio Escoto Amador – who opposed the June 2009 coup and who have information about it.

Message from Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Jean-François Julliard