In a new step in its hemisphere-wide campaign to create public awareness and have unpunished murders of journalists solved the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) today called on the Chief Justice of the Honduras Supreme Court, Jorge Alberto Rivera Avilés, to act to see that investigations into the deaths of three journalists in his country move ahead.

In a letter signed by hundreds of newspaper readers throughout the Americas sent to the Chief Justice he is asked to use his good offices so as to bring to justice those who killed Bernardo Rivera Paz, Santiago Rafael Munguía and Gabriel Fino Noriega, murdered in recent months in various parts of the Central American country.

Rivera Paz was killed in Buena Vista, Copán province; Munguía in San Pedro Sula, after receiving telephoned threats, and Noriega in Atlántida, after exposing illegal gambling at fairs in that city.

The IAPA, with funding from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, is waging a hemisphere-wide campaign aimed at creating awareness so as to solve the so-far unpunished disappearances and murders of journalists. In the last 22 years a total of 354 news men and women have been killed in the Americas and several others have gone missing.

Through ads published in more than 400 newspapers throughout the Western Hemisphere readers are being invited to join the campaign, titled “Let’s Put an End to Impunity,” by going to the http://www.impunidad.com/index.php?showcarta=33&idioma=us and signing a letter posted there addressed to the authorities in the country concerned.