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The latest victim is Edwin Josué Andino, 23, who worked for the LTV television channel. They shot him at close range in his face after taping his mouth shut. The assassins also killed his father. “We are not being guaranteed the right to be able to exercise our profession and freedom,” independent journalist Dunia Orellana, director of the media outlet Reportar sin Miedo in Honduras, denounces to RFI.
With the murder of Edwin Josué Andino, 98 journalists have been murdered in Honduras in the last ten years. “With the new government (of Xiomara Castro) there is a little more freedom of expression, but the same problems continue,” laments Dunia Orellana interviewed by Marilyn Lavado for RFI.
The journalist from the LTV channel was murdered along with his father last Monday after a group of men dressed as policemen took them out of their house in the Villafranca neighborhood.
“The hypothesis is that the event is the product of organized crime planning… they wore the tape intended to cover their mouths” and “with cameras located in the sector, it was possible to follow up on the possible perpetrators who fled in a vehicle” , later found in an abandoned house, the National Police said in a statement.
According to Amanda Ponce, director of the NGO Committee for Free Expression, they covered her mouth with adhesive tape, a pattern that has been replicated in Mexico in crimes against journalists and that would be associated with a “silencing of the press.”
“Many of these journalists not only do journalism, but also defend the territory or work on human rights issues. It is very sad to know that we are not being guaranteed the right to be able to exercise our profession and freedom,” Dunia Orellana denounces.
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Honduras condemned the murder of the journalist and his father and urged the authorities to carry out a “prompt investigation… and establish concrete sanctions for those responsible.”
