TEGUCIGALPA, (Reuters) – The Honduran government must investigate the cases of 22 journalists murdered in the last two years in a country that has the world’s highest murder rate, a United Nations envoy said yesterday.
Frank La Rue, a U.N. special freedom of expression rapporteur, also demanded that President Porfirio Lobo establish new measures to protect journalists, including giving them access to bulletproof cars and helping threatened reporters and their families to relocate, either within Honduras or abroad.
“The state must investigate and apprehend the intellectual and physical perpetrators of crimes against journalists,” La Rue said at a press conference. “The absence of justice constitutes impunity and in this case, impunity generates more violence against journalists.”
The growing presence of Mexican drug cartels in Honduras has fueled a surge in killings that has turned the Central American country into the world’s most dangerous, with 86 murders per 100,000 people in 2012.
La Rue told reporters that since 2010, when Lobo came to power, only one of the 22 cases of murdered journalists ended in sentencing, statistics he called “unacceptable and inhuman.”
In the four years before Lobo was elected, only one journalist had been murdered, La Rue added, citing government data. Alfredo Villatoro, a prominent radio journalist, was the latest victim. His was kidnapped in May and his body found a week later with a bullet wound to the head.
