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Luz Marina Paz Villalobos Cadena Hondureña de Noticias December 6, 2011, in Tegucigalpa, Honduras Unidentified gunmen fired at least 37 times at Paz, who was in a car near her home, The Associated Press reported. The journalist and her cousin, Delmer Osmar Canales Gutiérrez, who worked as her driver, were both killed. Paz was testing a car she was considering buying from an army colonel, Marco Tulio Leiva, press reports said.

Paz, 38, was the host of the morning news program "3 en la noticia" (Three on the News) on the Cadena Hondureña de Noticias (Honduran News Network). She had also worked for Radio Globo, a radio station known for its criticism of the 2009 ouster of former President Manuel Zelaya, news reports said.

Authorities said they were investigating several potential motives for the attack. Héctor Iván Mejía, a spokesman for the Ministry of Security, told reporters that investigators were looking into the background of Canales and were considering an attempted carjacking as a possibility. Mejía added that "another question [was] the journalistic work."

Officials were also looking into reports that the journalist had received threats related to her refusal to cooperate with criminals trying to extort money from a small business she ran. (CPJ,2011)

Radio journalist gunned down in Honduras New York, December 7, 2011--Honduran journalist Luz Marina Paz Villalobos was shot and killed in the capital Tegucigalpa on Tuesday, according to local news reports. Delmer Osmar Canales Gutiérrez, a cousin who worked as her driver, was also killed in the attack. Investigators are looking into several possible motives, including Paz's journalism.

"We are deeply troubled by the murder of journalist Luz Marina Paz Villalobos and her driver Delmer Osmar Canales Gutiérrez. Honduran journalists continue to be killed with impunity, and the government's failure to guarantee minimal safety is fostering a climate of lawlessness that is seriously restricting the work of the press," said Carlos Lauría, CPJ's senior program coordinator for the Americas. "We urge the administration of President Porfirio Lobo to put an end to this wave of violence by bringing journalists' murderers to justice."

Paz and Canales were driving near the journalist's home on Tuesday morning when unidentified gunmen on motorcycles fired on the car at least 37 times, according to the Associated Press. Press reports said that at the time of her death, Paz was testing a car she was considering buying from army Colonel Marco Tulio Leiva.

Paz, 38, was the host of the morning news program "3 en la noticia" (Three on the News) on the Honduran News Network radio station. Previously, she had worked for Radio Globo, a radio station known for its criticism of the 2009 ouster of former President Manuel Zelaya, news reports said.

Authorities said they were investigating several potential motives for the attack. Héctor Iván Mejía, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Security, told reporters that investigators would look into whether Canales had any personal problems and were also considering an attempted carjacking as possibilities, despite reports that the car was fired upon dozens of times. Mejía also said "another question is the journalistic work." Officials are additionally looking into reports that the journalist had received threats related to her refusal to cooperate with criminals trying to extort money from a small business she ran, but no other details were available.

Earlier this week, the offices of a leading Honduran daily, La Tribuna, were shot at; a security guard was seriously wounded in the attack. The newspaper had published a statement the previous month saying its staff had been targeted with attempted shootings, threats, and harassment in reprisal for critical reporting. Twelve Honduran journalists have been murdered since March 2010, at least three in direct reprisal for their work. A 2010 CPJ special report found a pattern of botched and negligent investigative work into the killings. (CPJ, 2011)

Luz Marina Paz Villalobos The murder yesterday of Luz Marina Paz Villalobos, a journalist with the radio station Cadena Hondureña de Noticias (CHN), in Comayagüela on the outskirts of Tegucigalpa, brings to 17 the number of journalists killed in Honduras since 2010.

Paz was test-driving a car when two men on a motorcycle opened fire, instantly killing her and a mechanic who was accompanying her.

Was this an attempt to steal the car, a settling of scores, or punishment for refusing to pay a “war tax” demanded by drug dealers on the business that she ran in parallel with her radio career? The motives for the crime are still difficult to determine precisely.

Paz was known to have views that were hostile to the present government. She had worked for almost 10 years at Radio Globo, an opposition station sympathetic to former President Manuel Zelaya, who was overthrown in a coup in 2009. Investigators believe the attack may be related to her work.

Noting that no murders of journalists have been solved since 2010, Reporters Without Borders said: “We deplore the disgraceful impunity enjoyed by those who order and carry out these crimes.

“The lack of conclusive investigations leaves the profession vulnerable to attacks by drug traffickers and some local authorities whose criminal activities have been exposed in the press.

“In this connection, we recall that the killers of the journalist Medardo Flores, a member of the deposed president’s party, the Broad Front for Popular Resistance (FARP), who was murdered in September, have not yet been identified.”

The press freedom organization noted there had been an unprecedented increase in attacks on the press. The day before Paz’s murder, the newspaper La Tribuna was the target of an armed attack by gunmen who fired several shots at its office in Tegucigalpa. A security guard was taken to hospital suffering from serious stomach wounds.

The newspaper’s editorial team believes the attack could have been in reprisal for the publication of an article on 22 November accusing members of the police of killing the son of Julieta Castellanos, the director of the National Autonomous University of Honduras, and one of his friends.

The attack on La Tribuna followed many death threats and assaults against its journalists, who have been prepared to expose the criminal excesses of the police force.

“What is the future of journalists who show courage and concern for the right of citizens to be informed? Judicial indifference, a product of the highly polarised media climate since the coup, gives the military and police a free hand to take it out on news organizations that dare to draw attention to the abuses and misdemeanours of public authorities,” Reporters Without Borders concluded.

(Reporters Without Borders, Dec 2011) 'Total impunity' Researchers caution that the surge in killings here cannot be attributed entirely to narcotics trafficking. As in Ciudad Juarez, drug-fueled violence appears to have fostered an overall climate of impunity, in which bullets settle the slightest dispute and anyone can literally get away with murder.

Journalists, labor activists and gays also are apparently being killed at elevated rates, and political violence has flared since the 2009 coup that deposed leftist President Manuel Zelaya. Then there are the thousands of other Hondurans who seemingly have nothing to do with the drug trade who have been slain in carjackings, muggings and hotheaded feuds.

"You always imagine that your parent will die of old age, not murder," said Claudia Castillo, whose father, who drove a grocery delivery truck, was killed last December in San Pedro Sula for falling behind on extortion payments, which gang members here call the impuesto de guerra ("war tax"). He had been mugged, assaulted or shot at on at least eight other occasions, Castillo said, including an incident a few months before his death in which teenage gangsters ordered him to dance and fired at his feet.

"We begged him to quit, but he said he had to pay for us to go to college," Castillo said. After burying him, her family moved to another neighborhood after receiving new threats from the gang.

At nearly every business here, from Burger King to the smallest mini-market, armed men with 12-gauge shotguns stand guard. Those who can afford it barricade their families behind razor wire, 10-foot walls and electrified fencing.

"If a person kills someone and the next day they're sitting in a restaurant drinking coffee as if nothing happened, then that person feels they have permission to kill anyone they want," said Jose Antonio Canales, a priest who works with the support group for victims' families. "There is total impunity."

Gang warfare For much of the 20th century, Canales said, the north coast of Honduras was a place of opportunity, drawing workers to the vast banana plantations owned by U.S. fruit companies. In the 1980s, as civil wars raged in Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador, Honduras and especially the San Pedro Sula area were held up as a model of export-driven development, attracting waves of workers to the assembly plants known as maquilas.

"People came from all over, but when they didn't find opportunity, the pockets of misery formed," Canales said. "Then a lot of kids were raised by a single mom or a grandmother because their parents were in the United States."

The transnational gangs MS-13 and 18th Street took root in the city's slums and have been warring ever since, reinforced by deported criminals from Los Angeles street gangs and U.S. prisons.

The United States has been drawn deep into Honduras's counter-drug fight, spending at least $50 million on security assistance since 2008, according to U.S. officials.

"This is a poor country where 65 percent of the people live in poverty and the government's law enforcement budget cannot begin to compare to the funds that drug trafficking organizations have," U.S. Ambassador Lisa Kubiske said in an interview here. "It's clear the country needs help."

Armed American drug agents are on the front lines of anti-narcotics operations, launching helicopter raids into the jungles of Mosquitia from the Soto Cano air base, where the United States has a large military presence. U.S. advisers are teaching police how to gather evidence and are helping modernize Honduras's ghoulish prison system. The United States has provided armored vehicles to protect judges from assassination and sophisticated mobile X-ray equipment that can scan vehicle cargo at checkpoints and border crossings.

But setbacks have undercut recent security improvements. On Dec. 7, former security minister Alfredo Landaverde - an outspoken critic of growing police corruption tied to organized crime - was gunned down in his car, a day after assassins pumped 37 bullets into the vehicle of radio journalist Luz Marina Paz Villalobos. Since then, Honduras's Congress has banned all motorcycle drivers from carrying passengers, because both victims were slain by hit men riding on the backs of motorbikes.

"It doesn't matter if you're a good or a bad person here, or if you're someone with a future," said Irwin Santos, whose brother Deybis - a university student - was killed in 2008 in San Pedro Sula. "In the end, you become just another statistic."

miroffn@washpost.com

This article was supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

The Guardian (London) - Final Edition

December 10, 2011 Saturday

Honduras pillion ban after ride-by killings

BYLINE: Tom Phillips

SECTION: GUARDIAN INTERNATIONAL PAGES; Pg. 35

LENGTH: 458 words

Politicians in Honduras have voted to ban motorcycle passengers after two drive-by killings threw the spotlight on to the country's desperate security situation.

MPs approved the law during a closed session on Wednesday night, arguing that it would help tackle a growing wave of drug-related murders in the Central American country, now a major hub for traffickers smuggling cocaine into the US.

"Given the current security situation, we believe that the appropriate response is to allow only one person (to ride) on a motorcycle," Pompeyo Bonilla, the Honduran security minister, told Congress.

The move followed two high-profile murders in the capital, Tegucigalpa. On Tuesday, Luz Marina Paz Villalobos, a radio show host, was gunned down outside her home by men on two motorbikes. The following day, Alfredo Landaverde, a prominent security expert and anti-corruption activist, was killed as he drove through the Honduran capital with his wife.

According to most estimates, Honduras suffers from the world's highest murder rate. In 2010, there were around 82 murders for every 100,000 inhabitants, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

Speaking to the Honduran newspaper La Tribuna, the mayor of Tegucigalpa, Ricardo Alvarez, suggested his country needed outside support to combat the rise in violent crime.

"I think the entry of an international force in the country is something we must start to discuss and give serious thought to," he said, adding that the ban on motorcycle passengers could be "part of the solution to Honduras's plight.

"We are reaching a point at which we either save Honduras or all Hondurans sink together. We must come together and row in the same direction in order to stop the terrible wave of violence that is plaguing the nation," he added. Miguel Pastor, the housing and transport minister, rejected claims that the new law infringed human rights. "Human rights are meant to protect all innocent people, those who fight criminality also," he said.

As Honduran politicians approved the ban on pillion passengers, there was outrage in Brazil's economic capital, Sao Paulo, over similar plans intended to clamp down on motorbike-riding thieves.

The bill, voted through in late November by members of Sao Paulo's state parliament, now needs approval from the governor, Geraldo Alckmin, who has signalled he will veto the new law.

"We are enormously concerned with the question of security but we need to be careful not to punish workers and low-income people who use motorbikes as a means of transport or for work," he said.

On Twitter, Luiz Eduardo Soares, a leading security expert, remarked that lawmakers might also want to outlaw the use of shoes or people walking in pairs. "I'm astonished," he wrote.

BBC Monitoring World Media Supplied by BBC Worldwide Monitoring

December 8, 2011 Thursday

Honduran radio journalist gunned down

LENGTH: 475 words

Text of report by New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) on 7 December

New York: Honduran journalist Luz Marina Paz Villalobos was shot and killed in the capital Tegucigalpa on Tuesday, according to local news reports. Delmer Osmar Canales Gutierrez, a cousin who worked as her driver, was also killed in the attack. Investigators are looking into several possible motives, including Paz's journalism.

"We are deeply troubled by the murder of journalist Luz Marina Paz Villalobos and her driver Delmer Osmar Canales Gutierrez. Honduran journalists continue to be killed with impunity, and the government's failure to guarantee minimal safety is fostering a climate of lawlessness that is seriously restricting the work of the press," said Carlos Lauría, CPJ's senior programme coordinator for the Americas. "We urge the administration of President Porfirio Lobo to put an end to this wave of violence by bringing journalists' murderers to justice."

Paz and Canales were driving near the journalist's home on Tuesday morning when unidentified gunmen on motorcycles fired on the car at least 37 times, according to the Associated Press. Press reports said that at the time of her death, Paz was testing a car she was considering buying from army Colonel Marco Tulio Leiva.

Paz, 38, was the host of the morning news programme "3 en la noticia" (Three on the News) on the Honduran News Network radio station. Previously, she had worked for Radio Globo, a radio station known for its criticism of the 2009 ouster of former President Manuel Zelaya, news reports said.

Authorities said they were investigating several potential motives for the attack. Hector Ivan Mejia, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Security, told reporters that investigators would look into whether Canales had any personal problems and were also considering an attempted carjacking as possibilities, despite reports that the car was fired upon dozens of times. Mejia also said "another question is the journalistic work." Officials are additionally looking into reports that the journalist had received threats related to her refusal to cooperate with criminals trying to extort money from a small business she ran, but no other details were available.

Earlier this week, the offices of a leading Honduran daily, La Tribuna, were shot at; a security guard was seriously wounded in the attack. The newspaper had published a statement the previous month saying its staff had been targeted with attempted shootings, threats, and harassment in reprisal for critical reporting.

Twelve Honduran journalists have been murdered since March 2010, at least three in direct reprisal for their work. A 2010 CPJ special report found a pattern of botched and negligent investigative work into the killings.

Source: Committee to Protect Journalists website, New York, in English 7 Dec 11