Media For Freedom, Nepal
July 5 2007
JOURNALIST DEATH TOLL SURPASSES 100 ONLY HALFWAY THROUGH YEAR, INSI
REPORTS
More than 100 journalists have lost their lives in the past six
months, their death toll looking to surpass the record level reached
in 2006, the International News Safety Institute (INSI) reports.
"This is a shocking development. We have never known such a high
death toll halfway through a year, and we fear for what might be to
come," says INSI director Rodney Pinder.
According to INSI, 72 of the casualties worldwide over the past six
months were murdered, including prominent cases such as Hrant Dink,
the high-profile editor of an Armenian newspaper in Turkey who was
shot outside his office in Istanbul, freelance photographer Edward
Chikombo, whose badly beaten body was found in roadside bushes in
Zimbabwe, and Ajmal Naqshbandi and Syed Agha, kidnapped with Italian
reporter Daniele Mastrogiacomo in Afghanistan by the Taliban.
Mastrogiacomo was released unharmed.
"Most of the dead were little known outside their own countries where
they were targeted for trying to do their daily jobs," says Pinder.
While most jounalists’ attackers go unpunished – nearly 90 percent,
according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) – in a
surprise move seven men were jailed in China last week for killing
investigative reporter Lan Chengzhang, who died in early January
after he was beaten for covering a story on an illegal coal mine in
Shanxi province, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ)
reports.
Iraq once again is the deadliest hotspot – accounting for 42
journalists and media workers killed this year alone, up from 28 at
the same time last year. The great majority of them were local Iraqi
journalists murdered by unidentified assailants. According to INSI,
four more journalists were killed in Iraq last week, bringing the
total to 214 media workers who have died in Iraq since the invasion
in March 2003.
Poet and journalist Rahim al-Maliki, host of two cultural programmes
on Al-Iraqiya TV, was one of 13 killed in a suicide bombing on the
Mansour Hotel in Baghdad on 25 June while covering a meeting of
tribal chiefs, reports Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans
frontières, RSF).
The following day, veteran reporter Hamed Sarhan was ambushed and
killed in Baghdad as he was driving home, says RSF. Sarhan had worked
for more than 30 years for the state-owned news agency until the
US-led invasion of Iraq. Since then, he had worked for the private
news agency Iraquion.
ARTICLE 19 reports that Zena Shakir Mahmoud, a journalist for the
Kurdish Party newspaper "Al-Haqiqa" and a former news presenter for
an Iraqi radio station, was shot dead in Mosul on her way home on 24
June.
And Luay Suleiman, a Christian reporter working with newspaper
"Nineveh al-Hurra" in Mosul, was found dead on 27 June, allegedly
killed by gunmen, says INSI.
Since the report’s launch on 28 June, two more journalists in Iraq,
correspondents for the Iraqi Islamic Party-owned television station
Baghdad TV, have been found dead. Mohammed Hilal Karji was kidnapped
outside of his home on 8 June as he was getting ready for work, RSF
reports. His body was found in the morgue the next day. Sarmad Hamdi
al-Hassani was kidnapped in his home in Baghdad on 27 June; his body
was also found in the morgue the following day.
After Iraq, the countries where most journalists were murdered in the
first half of this year were Afghanistan (five), Haiti and
Philippines, each with four dead, Somalia, Palestine and India
(three) and Sri Lanka, Mexico and Brazil (two).
As a news safety organisation, INSI records all manner of deaths –
from murder to accident – of all members of the news gathering and
production business, whether staff or freelance, provided they appear
to have died as a result of their work. Numbers reported by other
IFEX members may differ as they maintain their own records based on
their own criteria.
Visit these links:
– INSI:
– INSI’s directory of journalists and media workers killed:
htm
– CPJ: ml
– IFJ on Chengzhang:
– RSF on Iraq:
– RSF on Baghdad TV reporters:
– ARTICLE 19 on Mahmoud:
– ARTICLE 19 report on gender-sensitive reporting in Iraq/conflict
situations:
/pdfs/publications/iraq-gender-report-public.pdf
ticleID=1381