TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Journalists on the front line: Battling impunity and upholding press freedom
Just because we are not at war doesn’t mean that journalists can’t be killed simply for reporting, heaven forbid, the truth.
Change Size
Give no quarter: Members of the Surabaya chapter of the Association of Independent Journalists (AJI) rally on Jan. 25, 2019 outside the East Java governor’s office to protest the central government’s decision to grant a remission to the convicted murderer of AJI journalist AA Narendra Prabangsa. (Kompas/Bahana Patria Gupta)
“Death is not an enemy but a faithful friend that walks beside us throughout our journey.”
Really? This quote from Kahlil Gibran, the Lebanese-American poet (1883-1931) sounds pretty cool, philosophically speaking, but in the context of armed conflict, it belies its horrors big-time. And for war journalists, the terrifying specter of death constantly looms large.
Nov. 2 was proclaimed the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists, chosen to commemorate the assassination of two French journalists in Mali in 2013.
The United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution (A/RES/68/168) that “condemns all attacks and violence against journalists and media workers” and urges “Member States to do their utmost to prevent [this…] to ensure accountability, bring to justice perpetrators of crimes against journalists and media workers, and ensure that victims have access to appropriate remedies.”
Jump to 2021: Has the situation improved? It doesn’t seem so.
According to UNESCO, “117 journalists were killed in 2020-2021; in 2020 and 2021, Latin America and the Caribbean accounted for 38 percent of killings, followed by Asia and the Pacific with 32 percent of killings; only 14 percent of cases of crimes against journalists are currently considered judicially resolved; in 2021, the percentage of women among all journalists killed almost doubled, rising to 11 percent from 6 percent the previous year.”
Talking about women journalists, who can forget the brutal gunning down of Shireen Abu Akleh, on May 11, 2022? She was a prominent Palestinian-American journalist, who had worked for Al Jazeera for 25 years at the time of her death. While covering a raid in the Jenin refugee camp she was purportedly killed by an Israeli soldier while she was wearing the blue press vest designed to protect journalists operating in active war zones.
