Human Rights watch
Record number of journalists killed in 2009
AT least 71 journalists were killed across the globe in 2009, the Committee to Protect Journalists announced on February 16, 2010, the largest annual toll in the 30 years the group has been keeping track.
Twenty-nine of those deaths came in a single, politically motivated massacre of reporters and others in the Philippines last November, the worst known episode for journalists, the committee said.
But there were other worrisome trends. The two nations with the highest number of journalists incarcerated China had 24 journalists imprisoned at the end of 2009 and Iran had 23 were particularly harsh in taking aim at bloggers and others using the Internet. The number jailed in Iran has since jumped to 47, the committee said.
“It is a pretty grim picture,” Robert Mahoney, the deputy director of the committee, told a news conference, saying that governments had 136 reporters in jail at the close of last year.
Governments around the globe also deployed the tools of the Internet against their critics, Mr. Mahoney noted, citing the Middle East as particularly problematic.
In Tunisia, hackers destroyed the entire online archive of the independent Web newspaper Kalima, he said, while Iran had organized perhaps the most aggressive campaign to silence its online critics. The government there was breaking into online social networks like Facebook and Twitter to try to unearth not just its critics but their friends, allies and followers as well.
“They are turning the technology that should liberate the press, against the press this is a worrying development,” Mr. Mahoney said.
The United Nations Mission for Tunisia said no spokesperson was available Tuesday, while the Mission for Iran did not respond to requests for comment.
The Philippine journalists killed in an election-related ambush last November were all local reporters on the southern island of Mindanao, the committee's report said. In Somalia, nine journalists were killed in connection with their work.
Of the 71 confirmed deaths, 51 were murders, the committee said. The report noted that 24 additional deaths of journalists remained under investigation to determine if they were related to the journalists' work. Previously, the highest number of journalists killed in a single year was 67, in 2007, when violence in Iraq was raging.
Mr. Mahoney called on Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, to be more forceful on the issue.
“I would like the secretary general to make a more assertive and firm stand in defense of freedom of expression,” Mr. Mahoney said. “He can make a very firm and, I think, helpful statement by constantly bringing the issue of freedom of expression to the fore.”
Marie Okabe, a spokeswoman for the secretary general, said that Mr. Ban “has been very vocal in terms of pushing for freedom of the press and journalists' rights.”
“I am sure he will continue to do that,” Ms. Okabe said.
Source: UN Wire.
