Honduran journalist Ricardo Alcides Avila died on Sunday in a Tegucigalpa hospital, days after being shot.
According to the Committee for Freedom of Expression (C-Libre), Honduras has four journalists murdered this year and 97 since 2001.
The executive director of C-Libre, Amada Ponce, said that Ricardo Alcides Avila, 25, died after being shot in the head last Wednesday by unknown assailants in the south of the country.
Ponce indicated that Avila worked as a journalist and cameraman for the Metro television and radio channel in the city of Choluteca, 85 km south of the capital, Tegucigalpa.
From C-Libre they indicated that the journalist was intercepted on May 26 by unknown individuals who shot him when he was traveling from his house to work.
According to the organization that defends freedom of expression, the crime against Ricardo Alcides Avila was due to his work linked to social movements in southern Honduras.
The police maintained that the crime against the journalist had been a common criminal assault, a thesis refuted by C-Libre because Avila’s backpack with 9,000 lempiras (367 dollars) was found at the scene, his cell phone, documents personal and his motorcycle, completely unharmed.
In a statement about Avila’s death, C-Libre demanded that “the Public Ministry have a protocol for investigations of violent deaths of journalists and social communicators.”
The committee assured that since the 2009 coup against then President Manuel Zelaya, attacks and murders against journalists in Honduras have increased. (https://www.today90.com/honduran-journalist-dies-after-being-wounded-by-a-bullet-news/)
