Journalist David Romero says the government plans to kill him for uncovering a social security embezzlement scandal that has shaken the administration of President Juan Orlando Hernandez, France24 reports.
Hundreds of his supporters burst into a courtroom in the capital on Thursday and took him to the human rights office, right before he was about to testify in a slander lawsuit that was filed against him by Sonia Gálvez, wife of Assistant Attorney General Rigoberto Cuéllar, The Tico Times reports.
“I’ll be living here, [in] this house of human rights … we’re going to sleep here, we’re going to eat here,” Romero said in a press conference after meeting with Roberto Herrera Cáceres, head of the national human rights office.
The journalist should feel “welcome in this house,” Herrera said.
Protests fueled by the scandal have erupted in the country, and thousands are demanding Hernandez’s resignation, France 24 reports.
Romero is a journalist for Globo radio and television, which has criticized the current administration, The Tico Times reports.
He says he won’t return to the courtroom “until they change a dishonorable and contaminated tribunal,” which he alleges is following instructions from Hernández to send him to jail to be killed.
The Tico Times reports that the Hernández administration “initially did not answer questions from AFP about Romero’s accusation.”
Honduras is a violent place for journalists, Reporters Without Borders reports. Journalists are threatened, are the targets of judicial harassment, physical violence and murder. The National Commission for Human Rights (CONADEH) reports that all but two of the 51 murders of journalists registered since 2003 have gone unpunished.
Reporters who cover violence, human rights violations, corruption and organized crime — including the infiltration of organized crime into the state — are subject to reprisals.
It happens with an impunity that is worrisome given the fact that the hostility displayed by the authorities — even those at the highest level — far from guarantees journalists’ safety. Instead, authorities minimize the danger, denying that the journalists who were murdered were targeted in connection with their work.
When Radio Globo journalist Erick Arriaga was murdered on February 23, authorities claimed he had links to criminal gangs.
“We condemn the attitude of the Honduran authorities towards journalists as completely unacceptable,” said Claire San Filippo, head of the Reporters Without Borders Americas desk. “Not only do they do nothing in response to crimes of violence against journalists, failing to solve almost all of these crimes, but they constantly jeopardize journalists’ work. Journalists who criticize the government are denied access to state-held information, subjected to unjustified prosecutions and threatened by officials.”
She also said:
“When will the state stop gagging news and information, assume its role as guarantor of rights, and provide journalists with real protection? In the absence of protection and justice, must Honduran journalists either censor themselves or live in fear of violence and persecution?”
Reporters Without Borders says that the government makes it perfectly clear that it wants to control the media and gag critics, and it has targeted community media and opposition media like Radio Globo and Canal 36 in particular. Journalists here are met with a hail of threats, their access to state-held information is restricted, and they are subjected to judicial harassment in an effort to deter investigative reporting.
The Honduran government also throws a monkeywrench into the accreditation of critical journalists with state agencies and makes it difficult for journalists to attend major events. One example: Romero and fellow journalist Rony Martinez were denied access to a meeting of the presidents from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala on February 26.
The government’s behavior violates the position of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), which says: “Access to information held by the state is a fundamental right of every individual. States have the obligation to guarantee the full exercise of this right.”
Threats and intimidation are not unusual, and Reporters Without Borders says it “is particularly disturbed by the overt hostility that officials display towards critical media.” In January of this year, an army officer who heads the security detail for congressional speaker Mauricio Oliva told Globo Noticias reporter César Silva that he may end up “gagged in ditch.” The officer is also a member of the presidential guard of honor.
In another case, Marvin Ponce, an advisor to Hernández, insulted and slapped Romero in the face while they were in a Radio Globo studio in late January. Ponce had already allegedly threatened Romero by telephone. Romero was followed the day before by police chief Héctor Iván Mejía Velásquez.
In this latest case, Romero asserts that the government was ready for retribution.
“They had a hitman ready to kill me at the national penitentiary,” Romero said, per the Tico Times. He says the government is taking revenge on him for having exposed corruption in Honduras’ social security system. Hernández’s National Party stands accused of having allegedly accepted about $94 million skimmed off the top of the country’s social security system in order to finance his campaign in 2013. And, the attorney general’s office has confirmed that $330 million was pilfered from the institution. Hernandez acknowledged that some of that money made its way into the 2013 election campaign which allowed him to take power.
Spurred by allegations of corruption, thousands of people have held weekly demonstrations, demanding that Hernández resign, and that an international commission against impunity to investigate the president and all those involved.
Gálvez has accused Romero of allegedly slandering her on Globo radio and in TV programs. Globo has criticized the government and has shown support of the left-leaning party led by former President Manuel Zelaya.
