Witnesses Under Fire

THE TREACHEROUS ROAD between Baghdad and Najaf was the last known sighting of three journalists - two French and one Italian - who were abducted in Iraq during August. George Malbrunot of Le Figaro and Christian Chesnot of Radio France International, had set off for Najaf  to cover the standoff between the US military and the radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. It is thought that Italian Enzo Baldoni, of the independent weekly Diario, was hoping to interview him. The road had been the scene of numerous attacks on US forces. Malbrunot (41) and Chesnot (37) were experienced reporters who had been in Baghdad for a year, and had jointly published a book on Iraq. Baldoni (56) had reported widely from dangerous areas such as Colombia, Burma and East Timor.
On 28 August the Arabic television station, Al Jazeera, broadcast a brief video tape of what it said were the two French journalists standing in front of an Islamic Army in Iraq banner. Al Jazeera said the kidnappers had demanded that the French government scrap a ban on Muslim headscarves in state schools, but the ban went into force anyway. Two days earlier Al Jazeera had broadcast a video of Baldoni, who was taken by the same group. His passport and journalist's professional identity card were seen on the film that also carried an ultimatum demanding withdrawal of Italian forces from Iraq within 48 hours.
Both home countries were stunned by the kidnappings. In France's case, it had opposed the US-led war in Iraq, and had not sent troops to the country. On 1 September, Reporters Without Borders, the international press freedom organisation, held a vigil outside the Paris city hall for the French journalists. Under gigantic pictures of the two, visitors were able to sign petitions for their release and leave messages of support. The group also called for the release of Baldoni, saying that, like all journalists he should be treated as a civilian and cannot be seen as a party to the conflict. They added that, it is unacceptable to link a journalist to the politics of his government and to use his life as a means of applying political pressure.

Abuse

Abuse of journalists in Iraq doesn't just come from the paramilitaries. In May, the top US general in Iraq, Ricardo Sanchez, faced serious embarrassment after exonerating soldiers who apparently abused three staff working for the international news agency Reuters. The general said there was no evidence that the three, who were arrested after going to report on a helicopter crash, had been mistreated. Reuters, however, took the unprecedented step of making public for the first time details of the torture and abuse suffered by its staff. During their detention at a military camp near Falluja in January, two of the journalists were forced to put their shoes in their mouths, deprived of sleep, kicked, sexually humiliated and forced to remain in stress positions for long periods. The US soldiers laughed, taunted them and told them they would be taken to Guantánamo Bay. Despite signed affidavits from the three journalists - Baghdad-based cameraman Salem Ureibi, Falluja-based freelance television journalist Ahmad Mohammad Hussein al-Badrani, and driver Sattar Jabar al-Badrani - the US military said there was no evidence they had been abused. Reuters global managing editor David Schlesinger asked the Pentagon to review the military's findings about the incident.
Some journalists pay an even higher price for reporting the news. At least 40 journalists and media assistants have been killed in Iraq since the war began there in March 2003. Twenty-five of them have been killed so far this year.

Murdered with impunity

Internationally, over the last decade, 347 journalists have been killed while carrying out their work. Each year in January, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) publishes a list of journalists killed in the line of duty around the world. The figure only includes those killed in direct reprisal for his or her work or in cross fire while carrying out a dangerous assignment. It does not include journalists who are killed in accidents, such as car crashes.
While conflict and war provide the backdrop to much of the violence against the press, CPJ research demonstrates that the vast majority of journalists killed since 1994 did not die in cross fire. Instead, they were hunted down and murdered, often in direct reprisal for their reporting. In fact, according to CPJ statistics, only 55 journalists (16 percent) died in cross fire, while 264 (76 percent) were murdered in reprisal for their reporting. The remaining journalists were killed in conflict situations that cannot be described as combat, while covering violent street demonstrations, for example.
Since 1994 , CPJ has recorded only 26 cases in which the person or persons who ordered a journalist's murder have been arrested and prosecuted. That means that, in more than 90 percent of the cases, those who murder journalists do so with impunity. What are the motives behind the killings? In many cases, journalists are murdered either to prevent them from reporting on corruption or human rights abuses, or to punish them after they have done so. The brazenness of the killers is suggested by the fact that 53 of the 264 journalists who were murdered during the last decade were threatened before they were killed.
In 20 cases since 1994, journalists were kidnapped - taken alive by militants, criminals, guerrillas, or government forces - and subsequently killed. The kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in early 2002 highlighted this terrible phenomenon. In several cases, notably in Algeria and Turkey, journalists have simply 'disappeared' after being taken into government custody.
Photographing and recording combat is probably the most dangerous assignment in journalism, and during the last decade 51 cameramen, photographers and soundmen have been killed. The majority of them died in cross fire in places such as Sierra Leone, Iraq, Yugoslavia, and Russia. But others were deliberately murdered because of images they had captured. In January 1997, the charred and handcuffed body of Argentine photographer José Luis Cabezas was found in a rental car in a resort city near Buenos Aires. He had been killed because he had managed to photograph a reclusive business tycoon reputed to be the head of the Argentine mafia.
Fifty-three radio reporters were also killed during the last decade. The surprisingly high number highlights the importance of radio worldwide, particularly in poor, isolated regions and in places where literacy is low. Local radio reporters are exposed to heightened risk precisely because they are largely invisible to the outside world while being extremely visible in the communities where they report. This may explain why 17 of the 53 radio reporters killed since 1994 worked in Colombia, many of them in rural areas. Violence is endemic in the Colombian countryside, where political and personal disagreements are routinely settled through force, and Colombian authorities have virtually no ability to enforce the law. Lawlessness and war are also major threats to press freedom in Colombia, where 31 journalists have been killed since 1994.

Dangerous countries

The most deadly country for journalists during the last decade was Algeria, where 51 local journalists have been killed since 1994 (several more media workers have also been killed). Fifty-eight were murdered between 1993 and 1996 in the height of a bitter civil conflict that began after the government cancelled elections in 1992 to prevent the Islamic Salvation Front from winning power. In response, religious extremists launched a brutal insurgency campaign that included targeted attacks on journalists, intellectuals, and other civilians. Militants are responsible for the bulk of the journalists' killings, but government security forces are believed to be responsible for a number of disappearances. Algerian authorities have failed to conduct a serious investigation into the deaths, and have refused to allow independent international inquiries.
In Russia, where 30 journalists have been killed during the last decade, 19, more than half, were targeted in retaliation for their work, in many cases by the mafia. Successive wars in the breakaway republic of Chechnya have also been dangerous for journalists. While 11 were caught in crossfire or killed by mines, at least four journalists were killed for their reporting on the conflict, usually for investigating human rights abuses by the Russian military.
Fifteen journalists have also been killed in the Balkans, 13 of them while covering the region's separatist wars. In Rwanda, 16 journalists have been killed in the last decade, 14 of which were targeted and massacred by Rwandan Armed Forces and Hutu militias in April 1994. Fifteen journalists have been killed in India since 1994, many victims in the dispute over Kashmir.
Local journalists covering crime, corruption, and human rights violations are extremely vulnerable, particularly in countries where conflict is widespread and impunity is the norm. Covering combat is risky, but a much greater threat than a stray bullet is murderers who kill journalists deliberately, using the generalised violence associated with war to cover their tracks.
Increasing safety for local journalists working in dangerous places means giving them greater visibility, and that means publicising attacks against them. Doing so is one way to fight impunity for those who murder journalists, which is the single greatest threat to the survival of the press around the world.

Press freedom

More than a third of the world's people live in countries where there is no press freedom. Today, more than 130 journalists around the world are in prison simply for doing their job. In Nepal, Eritrea and China, they can spend years in jail just for using the 'wrong' word or photo. Reporters Without Borders believes imprisoning or killing a journalist is like eliminating a key witness, and threatens everyone's right to be informed. This is why, in 2002, it acquired a judicial arm. To ensure that murderers and torturers of journalists are brought to trial, it provides victims with legal services, and represents them before the competent national and international courts, so that proper judicial procedures can be implemented.
Reporters Without Borders maintains a trilingual (French, English and Spanish) website (www.rsf.org)  in order to keep a daily tally of attacks on press freedom as they occur throughout the world. Updated several times a day, it functions like a press-freedom news agency. It gives Internet users an opportunity to act and demand the release of jailed journalists by signing on-line petitions. To circumvent censorship, it occasionally offers articles that have been banned in their country of origin, hosts newspapers that have been closed down in their homeland, and serves as a forum where journalists who have been silenced by authorities can voice their opinions. This website, which welcomes 150,000 to 200,000 visitors per month, is a vital international 'barometer' on press freedom.

 
NEPAL
The violent demonstrations that erupted in Kathmandu on 1 September 2004 after the execution of 12 Nepalese hostages in Iraq affected the media when protestors set fire to the offices of the privately-owned media groups Kantipur and Space Time. At least five Kantipur employees were assaulted by the demonstrators. Despite media appeals, police did not intervene. A dozen journalists were attacked while reporting on the disturbances.
Both the Nepalese King Gyanendra  and the rebel leader Pushpan Kamal Dahal ('Comrade Prachanda') have demonstrated hostility towards the press. The Maoist rebels were heavily criticised after the 11 August execution of Radio Nepal reporter Dekendra Raj Thapa. Bijay Mishra, a reporter for the daily Kantipur in the eastern district of Siraha, received a death threat on 2 September that he would receive the same fate as Dekendra Raj Thapa. The Maoists accused him of failing to report their activities in his newspaper.

ERITREA

The last remaining foreign correspondent in Eritrea left the country on 9 September 2004 after the government ordered his expulsion. Jonah Fisher, who worked in Eritrea for 18 months as correspondent for the BBC and Reuters, said authorities gave no reason for his expulsion, but that he had faced a pattern of increasing difficulties. Fisher was summoned 2 September to the Information Ministry, where an official said his press accreditation was being revoked, and that he should prepare to leave. Four days later, after the authorities received faxed protests from the BBC and Reuters, Fisher received a call from the same official who told him he must leave Eritrea within three days.
Eritrea has no private press since a crackdown three years ago when it banned independent media, and jailed a number of journalists. Seventeen local journalists are now imprisoned in Eritrea, and many have been held incommunicado since September 2001. In 2004, for the third year running, CPJ named the tiny Horn of Africa nation one of the world's 10 worst places to be a journalist. Isaias Afwerki, who has been president since independence in 1993, bears most of the responsibility for this.

IVORY COAST
Guy-André Kieffer, one of the few foreign investigative reporters still based in Ivory Coast, was last seen on 16 April 2004. In the weeks prior to his disappearance, Kieffer received death threats. The journalist had both French and Canadian citizenship. Unconfirmed reports in the opposition press have suggested that members of the security forces abducted and killed Kieffer. Reports that the tortured corpse of a white man was seen in Azaguié, near Abidjan, also remain unconfirmed. On 25 May, Michel Legré, a brother-in-law of Ivory Coast's first lady, was detained in the commercial capital, Abidjan, and formally charged as an accessory in the kidnapping, confinement, and murder of Kieffer.
The missing journalist was also a commodities consultant specialising in the Ivory Coast's lucrative cocoa and coffee sectors for a company that had contracts with the government. He had conducted numerous investigations in these sectors, including exposing corruption.