Prominent security expert and anti-corruption activist Alfredo Landaverde was gunned down last week in Tegucigalpa by assailants on a motorbike, just one day after a journalist, Luz Marina Paz, was murdered in a similar fashion.
According to news reports, Mr. Landaverde and his wife, Hilda Caldera, were stopped at a traffic light on their way to the city centre from their home in the Valle de Ángeles area when the unknown gunmen intercepted their vehicle and opened fire. Mr. Landaverde died en route to the hospital; Mrs. Caldera managed to survive a bullet wound to the back.
Mr. Landaverde, formerly the head of the Honduran Anti-Narcotics Commission, was described in the news media as having been a brave and tireless campaigner against the narcotics trade and an “outspoken critic” of police and political corruption, issues that, in his view, were more often that not interrelated.
According to Honduras’s La Tribuna newspaper, Mr. Landaverde served as an adviser to both the Honduran Security Ministry, which oversees the National Police, and to the Attorney General’s Office until last year, when he left those roles to act as an independent security analyst to the media.
Multiple news sources appeared to draw a connection between Mr. Landaverde’s murder and statements that he made in previous weeks. In a public interview with the Channel 5 television station program “Frente a Frente” in early November, Mr. Landaverde called on former security minister Oscar Álvarez and former national police director José Luis Muñoz Licona to hand over a list of 25 high-ranking officials who, according to Mr. Landaverde’s sources, were involved in drug trafficking. Mr. Landaverde reportedly received no answer from the men.
On 22 November, La Tribuna published remarks by Mr. Landaverde that accused state security agents, in cooperation with organised crime, of being the masterminds of the 2009 murder of Julián Arístides González, then-director of the National Office of Anti-Narcotic Operations. Mr. González, who was also killed in a motorbike drive-by shooting, had announced the release of names involved in the drug trade, among which members of the National Police reportedly figured.
Last week’s murder of Ms. Paz brought the total number of journalists killed this year in Honduras to seven, making it the second deadliest country for the media in the Western Hemisphere after Mexico. The government has largely attributed the deaths to the country’s recent, dramatic surge in violence, due in large part to the influx of drug cartel operations and the aftermath of a destabilizing 2009 coup.
However, the fact that most if not all of the journalists murdered this year were known for their criticism of the government and, in many cases, were supporters of deposed president Manuel Zelaya suggests the troubling picture of a government unwilling to guarantee the right of its citizens to dissent.
The International Press Institute (IPI) offers it condolences to the family of Alfredo Landaverde and, in particular, to his wife, Hilda, whom it wishes a speedy recovery,” IPI Press Freedom Manager Anthony Mills said: “The murder of Mr. Landaverde continues a disturbing trend of silencing journalists and government critics in Honduras. IPI is deeply concerned about both the worsening security situation there and the inability or unwillingness of the Honduran government to bring the masterminds of media-related killings to justice. We urge the administration of President Porfirio Lobo Sosa in the strongest terms possible to conduct an immediate and thorough investigation into this crime.”
Earlier this week, Honduran soldiers used tear gas on a group of journalists demonstrating in front of the Presidential Palace in Tegucigalpa. Dozens of members of the organization “Journalists for the Life and Liberty and Expression” had gathered to demand that President Lobo investigate crimes and threatening behaviour against journalists. Witnesses say members of the Presidential Guard used clubs to forcibly push the protesters back from the palace.
