Reporters Sans Frontières

Reporters Without Borders is concerned about apparent foot-dragging in the investigation into the radio journalist Vanderlei “Wanderley” Canuto Leandro’s murder on 1 September in Tabatinga, a border town in the northwestern state of Amazonas. Canuto had accused mayor Samuel Beneguy in May of threatening him in connection with his work.

President Rafael Correa Delgado

Carondelet Palace

Quito, Ecuador

Reporters Without Borders calls on the Peruvian authorities to give clear evidence of a determination to combat impunity after the second murder of a journalist in Peru this year. Shot by masked gunmen near his home in the northwestern city of Casma on 7 September, TV journalist Pedro Alfonso Flores Silva died of injuries to the liver and colon yesterday.

Ecuadorean media minister Alvarado published an open letter to Reporters Without Borders on 9 September in response to the one that its secretary-general, Jean-François Julliard, addressed to President Correa three days before. RWB is posting the minister’s reply on its website. It includes an invitation to international media freedom organizations to take part in a debate.

Reporters Without Borders is shocked by the murders of reporter Ana María Yarce Viveros, the founder of the weekly magazine Contralínea, and Rocio González Trápaga, a freelance journalist who used to work for Televisa. The bodies of two women were found in a Mexico City park yesterday.

Reporters Without Borders calls for the revision or withdrawal of the charges against Leocenis García, the editor of the weekly Sexto Poder, and Dinorah Girón, its publisher, in connection with a satirical photomontage published on 20 August, especially as they are inconsistent with a judge’s decision this week to lift the ban imposed on the weekly the day after it appeared.

A court in Oakland, California, has sentenced two men to life imprisonment without parole for the August 2007 murder of Oakland Post editor Chauncey Bailey but it took much too long to render justice in this case.

Reporters Without Borders firmly condemns the murder of Humberto Millán Salazar, a journalist based in Culiacán, in the northwestern state of Sinaloa, who edited the online newspaper A-Discussion (http://www.a-discusion.com) and presented a programme on Radio Formula. His body was found yesterday, a day after his abduction in Culiacán. He had been shot in the head.

Reporters Without Borders urges the federal authorities to do everything in their power to find Humberto Millán Salazar, editor of the online newspaper A-Discussion (http://www.a-discusion.com) and presenter of the programme “Sin Ambages” (Plain Language) on Radio Formula, who was kidnapped by gunmen yesterday in Culiacán, the capital of the northwestern state of Sinaloa.

“A new Chile is born,” said President Sebastián Piñera as he personally welcomed 33 miners at the surface after their spectacular rescue from a collapsed mine in the Atacama desert 10 months ago. The country has indeed changed since then but not as La Moneda palace’s current occupant expected.