Honduras: Journalism in the Shadow of Impunity

Violence against journalists is not new to the Americas, nor is impunity, its customary bedfellow; but few observers could have foreseen the deluge of threats, attacks and targeted killings that has swept through Honduras during the last five years. In February 2009, PEN International launched a year-long campaign to “highlight the persecution of writers and journalists and the issue of impunity in the region.” During Freedom to Write in the Americas, 29 PEN Centres undertook advocacy for writers and journalists in Cuba, Mexico and Venezuela and monitored cases in Peru, Colombia, and Nicaragua. These countries were chosen because of the “volume of attacks and severity of persecution against writers.” At the time, there was little reason to take note of Honduras. In 2010 PEN Canada and the International Human Rights Program at the University of Toronto, Faculty of Law began a study of journalists caught in the crossfire of former Mexican President Felipe Calderón’s war on drugs. When Corruption, Impunity, Silence: The War on Mexico’s Journalists was published in June 2011, reporting from certain parts of Mexico had become “as deadly an undertaking as living in a war zone.” Sadly, that description could now serve for parts of Honduras. This report was intended to complement Corruption, Impunity, Silence, specifically to provide an analysis of a situation in which a culture of impunity seemed to be emerging. Instead, our research showed that impunity had been entrenched in Honduras for at least a generation; what had changed was the level of violence against journalists.