CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico - After an inexplicable one-day lull that had the feel of a divine intervention, the deadly narco violence that has claimed more than 7,000 lives here in three years resumed Dec. 5 with new ferocity.

The year is ending with good news in the battle against impunity – the statute of limitations in cases of crimes against journalists in Colombia will now be extended to 30 years once President Juan Manuel Santos signs that into law.

In January 2010 work was put under way that would nourish the Geography of Risks in Mexico, first the planning and then the collection and analysis of documentary information on the state of attacks on journalists and news media in the country.

In Mexico attacks on freedom of expression are not punished, such cases are on the increase and so impunity is further undermining justice. This assertion stems from a fundamental fact that the IAPA has been able to confirm – that there is not one case of the murder or disappearance of a journalist in the last 20 years where those responsible are in prison serving sentence.

In November 2010 journalist Gabriel Michi, president of the Argentine Press Forum (Fopea), took part in the 1st International Meeting of Journalists of the Three-Nation Border Zone held in Ciudad del Este, Paraguay.

MIAMI, Fla. (Dec. 16, 2010) Fifteen years ago, killers of Latin American journalists almost always went scot free – but that was before the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) began campaigning for justice.

Yesterday’s conclusions at the Border Editors and Newspaper Publishers Forum made it resoundingly clear that the worst enemies news media and journalists facie on the northern border of Mexico are a lack of punishment and the violence generated by organized crime, issues that cannot be left to the government alone to solve.

Radio presenter Francisco Gomes de Medeiros’ murder on 18 October in the northeastern state of Rio Grande do Norte was carried out on the orders of a jailed drug trafficker, according to a report in the Diário de Natal daily newspaper on 3 December, quoting the local police.

Through Resolution No. 1956-2010-MP-FN the Attorney General, Dr. Gladys Echaíz Ramos, ordered that the National District Attorney’s Office and the Lima District Attorney’s Offices deal, in addition to their duties, with the offenses of homicide, murder, serious injury, kidnapping and extortion committed against journalists in the course of their doing their work.

Police forces who carried out a raid on the Complexo do Alemão shantytown in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on Sunday (November 28) arrested one of the murderers of TV Globo reporter Tim Lopes, Elizeu Felício de Souza, a.k.a. Zeu, who had been on the run.

Entre las recomendaciones de la Comisión Interamericana de Derechos Humanos en su informe 38/97 del 16 de octubre de 1997, es decir a trece años de la inmolación del periodista Hugo Bustios Saavedra y Eduardo Rojas Arce, debemos recordar que el Estado peruano debería hacer nueva investigación seria, imparcial y eficaz de los hechos denunciados a fin de identificar a los responsables del asesinato de los dos periodistas.

The IAPA expressed its pleasure to Peru’s judiciary at its decision to create a special jurisdiction to deal with serious crimes committed against journalists as they carry out their role to report the news, a step that the hemisphere organization had described as “of far-reaching importance for the battle against impunity” in a resolution adopted at its General Assembly held in the Mexican city of Mérida earlier this month.