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World Report - Guatemala

• Area: 108,890 sq km
• Population: 13,000,000
• Language: Spanish
• Head of state: Alvaro Colom, since January 2008

Guatemala continues to be a risky country for the media. It is dangerous for them to take too much interest in stories linked to organized crime, corruption or human rights violations during the 36-year civil war. Most murders of journalists go unpunished.

Journalists can be the victims of murders, physical attacks and abductions in part because of the alarming level of violent crime. Like neighbouring El Salvador and Honduras, Guatemala is a bastion of the "maras" – gangs of extremely violent youths involved in criminal activity that have branches now extending to Mexico, Canada and the United States. But few reporters dare to tackle the subject of the 1960-96 civil war or investigate cases of organized crime, corruption or human rights violations. They can pay dearly for trying to cover sensitive issues of this kind.

Three journalists have been murdered since 2010. Jorge Arquímedes Manchamé Palma, who had written several books and worked for the local TV programme Rescate S-20, was gunned down in his home in the eastern city of Chiquimula in July 2011. Yensi Roberto Ordoñez, a presenter for local TV station Canal 14, was found murdered in Nueva Concepción, in the southern department of Escuintla, in May 2010. The motive was not known but he had reportedly been threatened and harassed in connection with his work.

The motive was not known in the third case either, that of Víctor Hugo Juárez, a journalist and businessman who owned two online media, Wanima News and Guatemala Empresarial, who was found murdered on 30 September. According to the Guatemalan press freedom organization Cerigua, he appeared to have been tortured and strangled.

Vasni Vásquez, presenter of the Web TV programme Q'Rollo in the eastern city of Chiquimula, was the victim of judicial persecution. Although he showed his press ID, the police used violence to arrest him in April 2011 while he was trying to cover an operation to release a kidnap victim. Despite a complete lack of evidence, he was accused of being one of the kidnappers and was placed in pre-trial detention. A court refused to free him in June.

Computer equipment and files were stolen twice, in June and September 2010, from Marvin David Del Cid, a journalist with the daily El Periódico, who was working at the time on corruption and drug-trafficking stories in which the government was allegedly implicated. He also received threats.

On the legislative front, Guatemala finally obtained a law on access to state-held information after a 10-year wait. It came into effect on 21 April 2009 and represented a step forward. But the public continues to be barely aware of the law and so far it has done nothing to resolve the lack of transparency on the part of the authorities. There is still no provision for providing journalists with official protection.

Updated in August 2011

Topics: Pre-trial detention, Freedom of information, Freedom of expression,