Violence Against Journalists At 10-Year High

by Alicia Fraerman

(IPS) MADRID -- Last year, 42 journalists were killed and 766 were detained, the highest annual figures in the past decade, according to Reporters Without Borders (RSF, Reporters Sans Frontieres).

And the situation of journalists has not improved this year, as the death toll already reaches 11 and 101 have been arrested, while at least 250 have been threatened or attacked, and 142 media outlets have been censored, RSF president Fernando Castello told IPS.

Furthermore, he said, "The enemies of the press are replacing frontal, bloody repression with insidious harassment that is in appearance legal, and with economic pressure and the excuse of protecting privacy with the aim of deceiving public opinion."

The annual report presented on World Press Freedom Day by RSF, an international organization based in Paris, indicates that the independent press is in danger in Africa and that wars and armed conflicts in some of the countries on that continent are to blame for much of the decline in press freedoms there.

"Covering a conflict in Africa is increasingly dangerous," according to RSF.

Last year two reporters were murdered in Cote d'Ivoire and one in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, says the report, adding that in Equatorial Guinea, Rwanda, Eritrea and Togo the press has been the victim of authoritarianism, prompting numerous journalists to emigrate.

RSF maintains that the Americas continue to be a land of contrasts, as freedom of the press is widely respected, but is persecuted in Cuba, Haiti and Colombia.

Cuba's President Fidel Castro struck out at a dissident movement in 2003 with the detention of 75 people, among them 27 independent journalists, "for publishing articles abroad and interviewing U.S. diplomats."

On the American continent, the most dangerous country is still Colombia, where five reporters were assassinated in 2003 for their coverage of corruption cases and of their complicity with armed groups -- right-wing paramilitaries or leftist guerrillas -- "which control or are vying for entire regions" of the country.

The report also notes press problems, though of lesser degree, in Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Guatemala, Mexico and Argentina.

In the case of Brazil, in the past month alone, two radio reporters were murdered, known for their denunciations of corruption and drug trafficking.

The Committee to Protect Journalists reported the death of Jose Araujo, 37, murdered by hired killers in a rural area of the northeastern state of Pernambuco, and of Samuel Roma, 36, murdered in Capitao Bado, on the Paraguayan border, in Mato Grosso do Sul state.

With respect to the United States, RSF underlines that the government's attitude to press freedoms varies according to the actions of the media within U.S. territory or outside its borders.

Inside the United States, the situation is largely satisfactory, says the report. But the U.S. army was responsible for the deaths of five journalists in Iraq and continues to closely monitor the journalists who visit the Guantanamo prison in a U.S. enclave in Cuba, where hundreds of terrorism suspects, mostly Arab, are being held.

Among the journalists killed in Iraq following the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003 were Taras Protsyuk, of the British news agency Reuters, and JosŽ Couso, of the Spanish television network Telecinco.

They died in Baghdad when a U.S. tank fired on the Palestine Hotel on Apr. 8, 2003, where most of the foreign journalists lived and worked during the early weeks of the war. There were no Iraqi troops, police or militias anywhere near the hotel at the time.

The dictatorships of the Asia-Pacific region have not let down their guard, says RSF in the report. With 200 journalists detained in 2003, Asia was the largest prison in the world for news professionals. The communist regimes and the military junta of Burma punish journalists who demand freedom of expression or who denounce tyranny, states the text.

Censorship is a true plague in that region, though there is some room for optimism as community radio stations and FM broadcasters continue to gain ground.

In the Philippines, hired assassins killed seven journalists in 2003, while five escaped attempts on their lives. Only in three countries, says RSF, is there real freedom of information and expression: India, Indonesia and Thailand.

In the Middle East and Maghreb, the non-governmental organization notes that in addition to lack of independent media, and strong pressure for self- censorship, the invasion of Iraq and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict have put press freedom and reporters' safety to a tough test.

Fifteen journalists and two assistants died in 2003 in that region in the course of their work. Iran continues to hold the most news professionals behind bars in that region, said SŽverine Cazes, RSF director for the Middle East. Press freedoms have also suffered serious setbacks in Morocco and Algeria, said the activist.

The report's chapter on Europe states that a satisfactory situation continues, as there were fewer cases reported of violation of source privacy or aggression against journalists.

However, in the former Soviet republics, conditions are increasingly worse -- attacks, detentions, censorship, state monopoly over the print media and a lack of pluralism in the audiovisual media.

RSF notes that in Spain the threat of the terrorist group ETA continues to loom over journalists who do not share the Basque separatist organization's point of view. When asked if the 2004 report would cover what happened in the Spanish media in the wake of the Mar. 11 train bombings in Madrid, Castello told IPS it would not.

Early reports on the blasts, which claimed nearly 200 lives, pinned the blame on ETA, though it was found later that Islamic extremists with ties to al-Qaeda were responsible.

RSF will not focus on the Spanish media's coverage of the incident "because it does not have international relevance," he said.

"Of course, there was manipulation of the facts, but it occurred both in the pro-government and anti-government media, and not to the extreme that RSF should intervene. Spain has unions, associations and a justice system that work, and there is media pluralism, where all of this can be discussed," said the veteran Spanish journalist who worked for two decades for the state-run news agency EFE.

The RSF report includes a list of those who the organization considers "predators of press freedoms."

In that category are the armed Islamic militant groups in Afghanistan, Algeria, Bangladesh, Kashmir, Pakistan and the Philippines; the Colombians Carlos Casta–o, leader of the right-wing paramilitaries, and Manuel Marulanda, head of the leftist FARC guerrillas; the Basque group ETA, and the heir to the crown of Saudi Arabia, prince Abdullah.

Also on that list are presidents Hu Jintao, of China, Kim Jong Il, of North Korea, Fidel Castro, of Cuba, Muammar Ghaddafi, of Libya, Pervez Musharraf, of Pakistan, Vladimir Putin, of Russia, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia, and Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan.