Targeted killing of journalists is growing - IFJ
BRUSSELS A record number of media workers died in 2005 while doing their job, the International Federation of Journalists said on January 23. The trend towards the targeted killing of journalists is growing.
At least 89 journalists were murdered because of their work out of a total of 150 media deaths in 2005, the IFJ said.
IFJ general secretary Aidan White said in the IFJ's annual report the numbers were staggering and it was an unprecedented year.
"The IFJ has counted 89 who were killed in the line of duty, singled out for their professional work. In 2005 the trend towards targeted assassination of editorial staff has intensified," he said.
The largest number of deliberate killings, 38, was in the Middle East, all but three of them in Iraq. The region was "by far the world's most deadly beat for reporters in the field," the report said.
"Most of those who died were local, many of them working for international media outlets in Iraq where the streets are too dangerous for foreigners to tread."
In addition to the 35 targeted killings in Iraq, the IFJ said a further five journalists were killed there by US troops. This brought to 18 the number of reporters and media staff killed "at the hands of occupation forces since 2003 and reinforcing calls led by the IFJ for independent investigations into these deaths to eliminate suspicions of targeting".
White blamed governments, not only authoritarian regimes interested in silencing journalists, but also in democratic countries where politicians had what he called an ambiguous relationship with the press, for failing to take the problem seriously.
"There is still absolute inertia ... more than 90 per cent of every killing that we record will not be properly investigated," he told a news conference after the report's publication.
"If we were nurses, if we were nuns, if we were ... doctors working out in the field there would be immediate political concern. But because we are journalists and because our role is ambiguous as far as politicians are concerned, there is a tendency to ignore or downplay the crisis."
