MEDIA: Algeria, Russia Are Most Dangerous Countries for Reporters

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

NEW YORK, Jan 25 1996 (IPS) - Algeria and Russia continue to top the list of nations in which journalists are killed in the line of duty, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reported Thursday.

The CPJ confirmed that at least 51 reporters and editors were killed in the line of duty last year, and that another 11 suspicious deaths and disappearances remain under investigation.

“There is no question in our minds that this is an underestimate,” CPJ executive director William Orme said. As in past years, he added, the toll is expected to rise as CPJ investigations continue.

Nearly half the toll — 24 deaths — occurred last year during the ongoing war between Algeria’s military-backed government and Islamist rebels. Seven other reporters were killed in Russia, four in Brazil, and three in Colombia.

Although the total of 51 confirmed deaths is less than last year’s 73, 1995 marked a growth in the trend of journalists being deliberately targeted for assassination, CPJ Chairperson Kati Marton contends.

Of last year’s killings, only six were cases in which journalists were killed in combat circumstances: two deaths in the breakaway Russian region of Chechnya and one each in Azerbaijan, Burundi, Croatia and Somalia. The remaining 45 were all “deliberate political assassinations,” Orme said.

The deliberate targeting of journalists has grown dramatically as a trend in recent years, with several countries — notably Russia, Algeria, Colombia and Tajikistan — regularly leading the list of deadly nations for reporters to do their jobs.

One reason for the escalation is that the rules have changed, the New York Times noted in a Feb. 25, 1994 editorial. “In earlier wars, belligerents generally tolerated correspondents, who were normally unarmed and plainly identified. Now, journalists are not only exposed to fire but deliberately targeted, as in Bosnia, or taken hostage, as in Beirut.”

Nowhere has that trend been more clear than in Algeria. Since 1993, the nation’s extremist Armed Islamic Group (GIA) has vowed to kill pro-government journalists and intellectuals, arguing, “Those who live by the pen shall die by the sword.”

Some 52 journalists have been killed in Algeria since May 1993, most of them murdered by Islamist rebels. This is the highest death toll recorded by the CPJ in any one country.

Algeria is “the most outrageous example of what can happen when journalists become the barrier to one party’s attempt to gain power,” Marton said.

But the CPJ holds Algeria’s government equally responsible, saying there is a lack of protections for press freedoms. “They’re responsible ultimately for creating this polarised climate that led to this spate of terrorist incidents,” CPJ spokesman Avner Gidron told IPS.

By forcing journalists either to tow the government line or risk the closure of their papers and offices, President Liamine Zeroual’s government has also put many journalists in the position where they are perceived by the rebels as pro-government — and therefore worthy targets, Gidron noted.

Three murders were recorded in Russia last year, including the shooting of popular television anchorman Vladislav Listyev. None of the cases has been investigated adequately, the CPJ claims.

Four more deaths were recorded in the fighting in Chechnya, while another four reporters are missing and believed dead in that region, Orme said.

Although several of the Chechnya deaths occurred during heavy fighting, in at least two cases, Orme added, there is evidence that Russian troops deliberately fired on reporters. “There’s a lot of eyewitness testimony that indicates these were not accidents,” he told IPS.

The four murders of reporters last year in rural Brazil have also worried the CPJ, since Brazil has not had a reputation for cracking down on independent news coverage or targeting journalists.

Gidron said there was no apparent linkage in any of the cases, all of which occurred in small towns. But the government of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso has not been willing to investigate the killings at a federal level — a crucial failing, Orme argued, since local officials may be unwilling or unable to determine guilt.

The CPJ’s annual confirmation of the killings of came as the as the U.S.-based Freedom Forum declared its intention to dedicate a memorial in Virginia for more than 900 journalists who have died in the line of duty since 1812.

The memorial — a spiral-shaped glass and steel structure containing the names of 912 men and women who have died reporting the news — will be dedicated this May, Freedom Forum chairman Allan Neuharth said.

“In life, they have dodged the same bullets that foot soldiers do,” Neuharth said. “In death, too often they have been forgotten.”