Pedro Arcángel Canelas, owner of Radio Bambi and presenter of the news programme “Correo Informativo”, was assassinated on 19 December, 2020, in the municipality of Dulce Nombre de Culmí, department of Olancho, Honduras. He was sitting in his car outside a convenience store when a man pulled up on a motorcycle and shot him. He died later in hospital

In his last programme on 10 December, Canelas had spoken about the increase in violence in that area of the country and the ineffectiveness of the official response.

A lot of the violence in Olancho is linked to the activities of criminal groups involved in illegal logging.

Canelas was the fourth journalist killed in Honduras in 2020. Luis Alonso Almendares, an independent journalist in Comayagua, was assassinated on September 27th, and Germán Vallecillo Jr., a journalist, and Jorge Posas, a cameraman, both from Channel 45, were murdered in La Ceiba, on July 1st.

In 2020, 23 journalists were murdered in the Americas: 11 in Mexico, four in Honduras, two in Venezuela, two in Guatemala, and one in each of the following countries: Barbados, Brazil, Colombia and Paraguay. In Peru, the whereabouts of a reporter remain unknown.