The recent murder of a veteran radio reporter shows that Honduras remains a deadly place for journalists, even half a year after democracy was restored following a brief military coup.
The body of Israel Zelaya, 55, was found on a road near a sugar cane field close to San Pedro de Sula, Honduras’ second most populous city, on Aug. 24. He was shot twice in the head and once in the chest, local media reported.
Zelaya was the ninth journalist murdered in the Central American nation this year, officials said. None of the murders have been solved.
Only Mexico and its raging drug war is as deadly this year for journalists, with 10 killed there since January, according to the Vienna-based International Press Institute (IPI).
Honduran Security Ministry spokesman Leonel Sauceda said that Zelaya was found with all his belongings, including his mobile phone and wallet.
“We don’t want to continue calling for justice — we want these cases to be investigated,” said Lizeth Garcia, president of the Honduran Press Committee (CPH) in San Pedro Sula.
“We have colleagues who have reported receiving death threats and their cases are not being investigated,” said Garcia, who works for the daily La Prensa.
Garcia called on the government of Honduran President Porfirio Lobo to properly investigate the murders.
“Honduras has become one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists,” said IPI spokesman Anthony Mills said. “It is vital that the authorities fully investigate the killings, so that a culture of impunity is not allowed to thrive.”
The government has downplayed the murders. There was no statement following Zelaya’s death, and police issued a simple crime report.
Honduran Security Minister Oscar Alvarez said in May that the reporters were not being killed for ideological reasons, but rather “for personal issues or for denouncing certain actions of organized crime.”
The motives for Zelaya’s killing remain unclear — and perhaps this uncertainty is intentional.
“Every time they kill a journalist, we are all filled with fear, and we don’t even know the motive for the slayings,” Garcia said.
During his 20-plus year career, Zelaya — who went by the nickname “Chacatay” — worked for the two main Honduran radio networks, the Tegucigalpa-based HRN and Radio America, as well as the daily La Tribuna. More recently Zelaya was one of the hosts of the Claro y Pelado (Loud and Clear) radio talk show in San Pedro Sula, a show that dealt mainly with local issues.
Honduras — still recovering from an internal war with a leftist insurgency in the 1980s — saw democratically elected former Honduran president Manuel Zelaya ousted from power at gunpoint in late June last year after he took a political turn to the left.
Manuel Zelaya — no relationship with the slain reporter — failed in his attempt to be restored to power despite broad international support and street protests.
Lobo took office in January following an election held by the unelected interim regime.
Honduras also has one of the highest homicide rates in Latin America, with a murder rate of 66.8 per 100,000 inhabitants from 2004 to last year, according to government figures released in April.
Last year, 5,265 were murdered, the group said, in a country with a population of 7.8 million. In most cases, the crimes are unsolved.
For the president of the Committee for Free Expression, Osman Lopez, the slaying of journalists “is part of the environment of impunity and lack of legal protection that exists in Honduras, in a general sense, and regarding journalists in particular.”
“As long as these crimes are not investigated, there is a lack of protection and generalized impunity,” he said.
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