|
Journalists becoming:
Endangered species
by Thalif Deen
As news coverage from conflict zones - and reporting from
authoritarian regimes- continue to be occupational hazards, journalists
may fast become an 'endangered species'.
The United Nations commemorated 'International Day to End Impunity
for Crimes Against Journalists' on November 2 - even as
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed the sad realities of a
profession constantly under siege.
More than 700 journalists have been killed in the last decade - one
every five days - simply for bringing news and information to the
public, he recounted.
"Many perish in the conflicts they cover so fearlessly. But all too
many have been deliberately silenced for trying to report the truth."
Regrettably, only 7.0 percent of such cases have been resolved, and
less than one crime out of 10 is even fully investigated.
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) says,
impunity leads to more killings and is often a symptom of worsening
conflict and the breakdown of law and justice systems.
According to CPJ, 94 percent of journalists killed are local and only
6.0 percent are foreign correspondents. Male journalists account for 94
percent of journalists killed.
More men
Early this year, the Director-General of the UN Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) Irina Bokova, condemned
the killing of 87 journalists, media workers and social media producers,
in 2014 alone.
Akshaya Kumar, Deputy United Nations Director at Human Rights Watch,
told IPS, too often crimes against journalists go unmarked by the UN
system, especially in conflict zones.
UN monitors who are on the ground as a part of peacekeeping missions
or the offices of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) should
do much more to push for investigations and prosecutions, she added.
In a dedication to fallen or victimized journalists, Reporters
Without Borders has decided to rename 12 Parisian streets after
journalists who have been murdered, tortured or disappeared.
The renamed streets are those with embassies of countries where
journalists have been the victims of unpunished crimes.
The embassy addresses have been changed to draw attention to the
failure of these countries to take action and to remind them of their
obligation to do whatever is needed to bring those responsible for these
crimes to justice, the Paris-based organization stated.
The 'International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against
Journalists' was proclaimed by the 193-member UN General Assembly to
highlight the urgent need to protect journalists, and to commemorate the
assassination of two French journalists in Mali on November 2, 2013.
Meanwhile, CPJ said the ambush of a convoy in South Sudan and the
hacking deaths of bloggers in Bangladesh propelled the two nations onto
the CPJ's Global Impunity Index of countries where journalists are
murdered and their killers go unpunished.
- IPS
|
