MEDIA: West Bank is World’s Deadliest Beat – Report

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, May 3 2002 (IPS) - The Israeli-occupied West Bank is the world’s most deadly beat for a working journalist, a leading annual review of media working conditions concluded Friday.

One journalist has been killed, another three shot at and wounded, and 30 fired upon in four separate incidents in the recent violence in the Israeli occupied territories, said the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a New York-based non-governmental organisation.

CPJ also highlighted nine countries where journalists have come under constant attack: Afghanistan, Belarus, Burma (also known as Myanmar), Colombia, Cuba, Eritrea, Iran, Kyrgyzstan, and Zimbabwe.

The West Bank topped the list because the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) “used threats, intimidation, and in some cases, potentially lethal force to prevent journalists from covering its military operations,” CPJ said in its report, released Friday to mark World Press Freedom Day.

In one incident, it said, IDF troops fired stun grenades and rubber bullets at reporters waiting outside the compound where they had laid siege to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

“IDF soldiers have also fired live rounds at working reporters, detained several journalists, confiscated film or press cards from others, ransacked the offices of private West Bank television and radio stations, and repeatedly attacked the Palestinian National Authority’s broadcasting facilities in violation of international humanitarian law,” CPJ added.

Last month, the Israelis blew up the headquarters of the Palestine Broadcasting Corporation, destroying some three million dollars worth of communications equipment donated by Germany, France, Denmark and other members of the European Union (EU).

A meeting of EU foreign ministers last month reserved the right to seek compensation from Israel for the destruction it caused.

According to CPJ, Palestinian militants have also harassed journalists, particularly photographers who captured unflattering images.

In Bethlehem last month, militants forced reporters to hand over footage of the body of an alleged Palestinian collaborator who had been shot in a parking lot.

The CPJ report also said that in Colombia, some 29 journalists have been murdered in the last decade while they reported on drug trafficking, corruption, and violence committed by both leftist guerrillas and right wing paramilitaries.

In November last year, eight journalists were killed during the U.S.-led military offensive in Afghanistan. “The post-Taliban Afghanistan remains dangerous and chaotic,” CPJ warned.

Its report said that U.S. government actions have also hampered independent reporting in Afghanistan and documented three instances in which journalists were forcibly prevented from covering U.S. military activities there.

Eritrea was described as Africa’s foremost jailer of journalists, with at least 13 reporters behind bars and the entire private press banned since September last year.

In Belarus, authorities have made little progress probing the disappearance of Dmitry Zavadsky, a television cameraman who vanished in July last year.

The government of President Alexsandr Lukashenko, accused of Soviet-style repression, has seized equipment from media organisations, frozen their bank accounts, and installed a senior government official as head of the publishing house that prints most of the independent newspapers in the capital of Minsk.

In Burma, the government owns all electronic media and controls print publications through what the report described as capricious licensing requirements. Public access to the Internet is restricted to a limited number of websites screened and approved by military authorities.

The report also said that Zimbabwe, once known for its vigorous and largely uncensored independent press, has become a hostile environment for local reporters and foreign correspondents alike.

During the last two years, President Robert Mugabe’s government has detained more than 50 journalists, tortured at least two, and filed more than three-dozen lawsuits against reporters and news outlets.

Since April 2000, the courts in Iran have closed at least 47 publications, most of which backed President Mohammed Khatami’s reform movement. At least three reporters are in jail for their journalistic work.

In Kyrgyzstan, President Askar Akayev has been emboldened by the growing number of U.S. troops in his country and has used the threat of international terrorism as an excuse to curb political dissent and suppress the independent and opposition media.

In Cuba, the CPJ report said, the government of President Fidel Castro is determined to crush independent journalism but has not yet succeeded in its efforts.

Addressing a U.N. seminar Thursday, James Ottaway, chairperson of the World Press Freedom Committee, said that understandable outrage against terrorists should not justify the violation of basic human rights, subversion of the rule of law, or new forms of censorship.

“There was an inevitable tension between security and freedom of the press, particularly when their delicate balance was upset by a worldwide war on terrorism,” he added.

More information was needed, not less, about terrorists, and the public needed to know more, not less, about what governments were doing to stop terrorists, Ottaway said.