Honduras Faces Criticism Over Journalist Killings After a Coup

By ELISABETH MALKIN

MEXICO CITY — The Honduran government’s failure to investigate the killings of seven journalists this year has fostered “a climate of lawlessness that is allowing criminals to kill journalists with impunity,” the Committee to Protect Journalists concluded in a report released Tuesday.

The seven killings all occurred against a backdrop of political unrest set off by the coup that ousted President Manuel Zelaya 13 months ago.

The political conflict has continued since then, creating significant difficulties for the nation’s current president, Porfirio Lobo, who was elected in November. He has been lobbying to gain international recognition, but has run up against resistance by his counterparts in South America, preventing his country’s return to the Organization of American States, the main regional body.

Under pressure from the United States, Mr. Lobo has established a truth commission to investigate the events surrounding the coup and appointed a human rights adviser.

But human rights violations — directed mostly against the coup’s opponents, human rights defenders and activists — continue, according to a report last month by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

In addition to killings, the commission cited kidnappings, arbitrary detentions, sexual violations and illegal searches of “members of the resistance to the coup d’état” and their families. But the lack of proper investigation by the judicial system made it more difficult to “clarify the question of whether these are related to the context of the coup d’état,” it said.

The cases of the journalists have become emblematic of the persistent dangers. “The government’s ongoing failure to successfully investigate crimes against journalists and other social critics — whether by intention, impotence or incompetence — has created a climate of pervasive impunity,” wrote Mike O’Connor, the investigator for the Committee to Protect Journalists.

The group describes seven killings of journalists from March to mid-June of this year, including the March 14 killing of Nahúm Palacios, the main anchor of Channel 5 television in the agricultural town of Tocoa and an outspoken opponent of the coup. Not only did his position on the coup anger the military, but Mr. Palacios had also managed to annoy powerful landowners before his death by taking the side of several thousand peasants who had occupied land.

David Meza, a well-known radio reporter in La Ceiba, was killed on March 11 after he had conducted an on-air campaign against local police corruption.

The report points out that both reporters had a history of using their power to extract money from officials and businesses. But in neither case has the investigation made any headway into the motives behind their deaths.

In one case, an assassination attempt appears to have taken aim at a radio journalist, Karol Cabrera, who is a defender of the coup. Ms. Cabrera survived, but the young journalist who was giving her a ride was shot to death. In December, Ms Cabrera’s 16-year-old pregnant daughter was ambushed and killed.