Of the 69 journalists who died on the job in 2015, 40 per cent were killed by Islamic militant groups like Al-Qaeda and Islamic State. Startlingly more than two-thirds were targeted for murder, according to a special report by the Committee to Protect Journalists.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said in its annual report that nine of those killings took place in France, second to Syria as the most dangerous country for the press in last year.

Globally 69 journalists were killed due to their vocation, including those slain for their reporting and those caught in crossfire or in conflict. The total for 2015 is higher than the 61 journalists killed in 2014.

The CPJ says it is investigating the deaths of a further 26 more journalists during the year to determine if they too were work-related.

In 2012, 2013, and 2014, those killed in Syria exceeded those than anywhere else in the world. But the fewer number this year dying on the job in Syria only means it is so dangerous that there are fewer journalists working there, said the report. Many international news agencies chose to withdraw staff anf local reporters were forced to flee, said the CPJ.

The report cited difficulties in researching cases in conflict including Libya, Yemen and Iraq. CPJ went on a research mission to Iraq last year investigating reports that some 35 journalists from the Mosul area had gone missing, were killed or being held by Islamic State.

The militant group has a grip on the city so the CPJ said it could only confirm the deaths of a few journalists. The committee’s report said it had received reports of dozens of other journalists killed but could not independently confirm the deaths or if indeed, journalism was the reason. It said several of these journalists are currently on CPJ’s missing list.

A mural for Avijit Roy in Dhaka, one of four bloggers murdered by extremists in Bangladesh this year. Credit: AP/A.M. Ahad

The Charlie Hebdo massacre that took place in Paris last January was claimed by Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Eight journalists at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo were targeted.

Islamic State in October murdered two Syrian journalists living in exile in Turkey, Fares Hamadi and Ibrahim Abd al-Qader. Abd al-Qader was given CPJ’s 1015 International Press Freedom Award as he was an early member of Raqaa is Being Slaughtered Silently, a Syrian citizen journalist group.

“In Bangladesh, members of an Al-Qaeda affiliate or another local extremist group, Ansarullah Bangla Team, were suspected in the hacking or stabbing murders of a publisher and four bloggers, including U.S.-Bangladeshi writer Avijit Roy, who was attending a book fair when he was killed,”said the report.

The Taliban in Pakistan claimed responsibility for the shooting of Zaman Mehsud, president and secretary-general of the Tribal Union of Journalists’ South Waziristan chapter and reporter for the Urdu-language Daily Ummat and Daily Nai Baat newspapers.

A security officer investigates the murder of Somali journalist Hindia Haji Mohamed, who was killed by a car bomb in December. Credit: AFP/Mohamed Abdiwahab

In Somalia, Hindia Haji Mohamed, a journalist and the widow of another murdered journalist, was killed in December when a bomb blew up her car in an attack claimed by the Islamic militant group al-Shabaab.

Governments around the world were jailing at least 110 journalists on anti-state charges. This is out of 199 total jailed, according to CPJ’s most recent annual prison census.—It shows how the press is being cornered and targeted by terrorists and also squeezed by the squeezed by authorities saying there were committed to fighting terror as well, it said.

More than two thirds of the journalists killed in 2015 were targeted and murdered as a direct result of their work.

The report said about one third of journalists’ deaths worldwide were carried out by criminal groups, government officials, or local residents who were, in most cases, drug traffickers or those involved in organized crime. They included Brazilian Gleydson Carvalho, shot dead by two men while he was presenting his afternoon radio show. He was often critical of politicians and police Brazil had six killings last year, the highest since CPJ began keeping records in 1992.

But Brazilian judicial authorities have made headway in combating impunity by getting six convictions in murder cases in the last two years, said the report.

South Sudan registered for the first time on CPJ’s index of slain journalists when unidentified gunmen attacked an official convoy killing five journalists traveling with a county official. The motive is still unknown but there have been various accusations. Some say this could have been the result of the power struggle between former Vice President Riek Machar and President Salva Kiir which set off the civil war in 2013.

The murders of the five landed South Sudan on CPJ’s Global Impunity Index, which highlights countries where journalists are murdered and there is no one held responsible so their killers go free.

South Sudan, Poland and Ghana appeared on CPJ’s killed database for the first time. In Poland, Łukasz Masiak, was fatally assaulted in a bowling alley after telling colleagues he feared for his life. He was the founder and editor of a news website and reported on crime and drugs and pollution. In Ghana, radio reporter George Abanga, was shot dead on his way back from covering a cocoa farmers dispute.

CPJ cites these trends from its research:

• Seventeen journalists worldwide were killed in combat or crossfire. Five were killed on a dangerous assignment.
• At least 28 of the 47 murder victims received threats before they were killed.
• Broadcast reporting was the most dangerous job, with 25 killed. Twenty-nine victims worked online.
• The most common type of reporting by victims was politics, followed by war and human rights.

CPJ, in 1992, began compiling detailed records on all journalist deaths. If motives in a killing are unclear, it is possible that a journalist died in relation to his or her work and CPJ classifies the case as “unconfirmed” and continues to investigate. CPJ said its list does not include journalists who died of illness or natural causes or were killed in car or plane accidents unless the crash considered hostile action.

(End)

By Emile Nakhleh
WASHINGTON, Sep 5 2014 (IPS)

Millions of words have been written about the rise, conquests, and savagery of the Islamic State (ISIS) in Iraq and Syria, and Boko Haram in Nigeria. Both have declared an “Islamic State” in their areas although Boko Haram has not claimed the mantle of a successor to the Prophet Muhammad as ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has done in Greater Syria. The two groups are the latest in a string of terrorist organisations in the past two decades.

American and other Western media have raised the ISIS terror threat to unprecedented levels, and the press have extolled the group’s military prowess, financial acumen, and command of social media propaganda.

The beheadings of U.S. journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff are the latest horrible manifestations of the group’s brutality. ISIS is now seen as a serious threat to the U.S. and British homelands and new measures are being taken in both countries to combat the dangers it poses.

The Sunni regimes’ benign neglect of the rapidly spreading Sunni violent ideology and its divisive sectarian policies has allowed ISIS to spread. This does not augur well for its survival. The Saudi brand of intolerant, narrow-minded Wahhabi-Salafi Sunni Islam is not much different from al-Baghdadi’s modern day caliphate.
Although surprised at the rapid growth of ISIS, Western policymakers should not be bewildered by the rise of yet another terrorist group. In the past 20 years, the world has witnessed the emergence of al-Qaeda as a global jihadist group, Jama’a Islamiyya in Southeast Asia, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, al-Qaeda in North Africa, al-Qaeda in Iraq, Boko Haram in Nigeria, the Islamic Fighting Group in Libya, al-Shabab in Somalia, the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and a few more localised bands of terrorists across the greater Middle East.

In every case, Western countries described the groups as a “gathering threat” and mobilised friendly countries, including autocratic rulers, against the perceived dangers.

Policy and intelligence analysts spent untold hours and travelled thousands of miles tracking the movements of these groups and their leaders, and writing briefs and reports about the nature of the threat.

Most of these analytic reports have focused on “current” issues. Only a meagre effort has been expended on long-term strategic analysis of the context of radical and terrorist groups and their root causes. It’s as if we are doomed to fight yesterday’s wars with no time to look into the context that gives rise to these groups. President Barack Obama’s recent statement that his administration had no strategy to fight the ISIS menace in Syria epitomises this analytical paralysis.

Regional problem

ISIS is primarily a threat to Arab countries, not to the United States and other Western countries. The more Sunni Arab states remain silent in the face of this pseudo-religious vulgarity, the sooner terrorism would be at their door. Arab society under the yoke of extremist Islamism must be addressed from within the region, not by American airstrikes or Western military intervention.

If the Islamic State expands beyond the Levant, it will plunge Arab societies into militancy, bloody conflicts, and depravity devoid of free thought, creativity, and economic prosperity.

The threat that Western societies could potentially face would come not from ISIS but from the hundreds of their young citizens who joined ISIS. These young jihadists, who hail from the U.S., Canada, Britain, France, Italy, Australia, and other countries, have joined ISIS either as “walk-in” volunteers or as a result of ISIS’ sophisticated social media recruiting campaign. They left their seemingly comfortable lives for all kinds of political, psychological, religious, or ideological reasons to fight for a “cause” they are not terribly clear about.

If they survive the fighting, they would return home having been brainwashed against the perceived decadence of Western Christian societies and the imagined “purity” of their faith. Their imported emotional contradictions would drive some of them to relive their jihadist experience in the Levant by committing acts of violence and terrorism against their fellow citizens.

The so-called caliphate, whether in the Levant or West Africa, is a backward perversion of Sunni Islam that opposes modernity in all of its manifestation – interfaith dialogue, women’s education, minority rights, tolerance, and reason. A self-proclaimed successor to the Prophet Muhammad, al-Baghdadi’s Islamic State in the Syrian Desert is violating every principle of Muhammad’s Islamic State in Medina in the 7th century.

Some Bush-era neo-cons and Republican hawks in the Senate who are clamouring for U.S. military intervention in Syria seem to have forgotten the lessons they should have learned from their disastrous invasion of Iraq over a decade ago. Military action cannot save a society when it’s regressing on a warped trajectory of the Divine – ISIS’ proclaimed goal.

As long as Arab governments are repressive, illegitimate, sectarian, and incompetent, they will be unable to halt the ISIS offensive. In fact, many of these regimes have themselves to blame for the appeal of ISIS. They have cynically exploited religious sectarianism to stay in power.

If it is true that a young man is not radicalised and does not become a terrorist overnight and if it is true that a terrorist group does not develop in a vacuum, then it’s time to stand back and take a strategic look at the factors that drive ISIS and similar Sunni terrorist groups in the Arab world.

1. Intolerant Doctrine. Some Arab Sunni regimes, including Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, continue to preach an intolerant religious Sunni ideology that denigrates not only other faiths but also Shia Islam. Christian religious places and educational institutions cannot operate freely in places like Saudi Arabia.

Much of the anger that has characterised the Islamisation of Muslim societies in recent years has been directed against these institutions. This type of harassment is felt across the region, from Palestine to Saudi Arabia. What makes this reality especially sad is the fact that Christian institutions have been at the forefront of Arab educational renaissance since the 19th century.

The Sunni regimes’ benign neglect of the rapidly spreading Sunni violent ideology and its divisive sectarian policies has allowed ISIS to spread. This does not augur well for its survival. The Saudi brand of intolerant, narrow-minded Wahhabi-Salafi Sunni Islam is not much different from al-Baghdadi’s modern day caliphate.

The Saudis oppose ISIS because of its perceived threat to the regime, but they cannot disavow their theological worldview, which rejects Shia Islam, Christianity, and Judaism and denies women their rightful place as equal citizens. The rapidly spreading ISIS doctrine is making it a bit late for the Saudis and other Sunni regimes to act. Nor will the West be able to bail them out.

2. Arab Autocracy. Sunni Arab dictators have refused their peoples freedoms of speech, organisation, political activism, innovation, and creativity. The three “deficits” of freedom, education, and women’s rights that Arab intellectuals identified in the Arab Human Development Report in 2002 are yet to be meaningfully addressed.

Politics is controlled by the powerful with no room for reason or compromise among the different stakeholders and centres of power in society. Those on top commit all kinds of dastardly deeds to stay in power, and those at the bottom are doomed to remain stuck in the proverbial “bottom one billion.” Regimes do not allow the meaningful separation of powers, checks and balances, and independent judiciaries to properly function. Control, fear, and co-optation remain the preferred tools of Arab dictators.

3. Hypocrisy of “Values.” President Obama has often invoked American values of liberty, human rights, equality, justice, and fairness as the underpinnings of U.S. democracy and of “what makes us who we are.” Yet when Arab publics see Washington steadfastly supporting Arab dictators, who are the antithesis of American “values,” the United States comes across as hypocritical and untrustworthy.

The debates within Islam over whether the faith should return to its 7th century roots, as ISIS’s ruthlessness has shown, or leap into the 21st century modern world, as Turkey has demonstrated, should primarily concern Muslims. They and they alone are the ones to resolve this quandary. ISIS is a violent symptom of this tug of war between intolerant traditionalists and forward-looking reformists. The West should stay out of the debate.

Western security and law enforcement agencies should focus on their own citizens and track their would-be jihadists, but Western military aircraft should stay out of the skies of the Levant.

Edited by Ronald Joshua

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS-Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Sinai militia carrying al-Qaeda flags head for a funeral of killed militants. Credit: Hisham Allam/IPS.

By Hisham Allam
CAIRO, Aug 17 2013 (IPS)

The violence in Cairo came amidst firm indications that Muslim Brotherhood members hit back after a brutal crackdown this week that left many hundreds dead. And the winds of retaliation have blowing in from the Sinai peninsula, the desert to the east.

Sinai has witnessed daily attacks on police stations and security checkpoints since the overthrow of Morsi Jul. 3 in response. The attacks have come amidst mass protests demanding his release from detention and reinstatement as president.

The crackdown on Muslim Brotherhood supporters in Cairo, that left the world shocked over its extent and brutality, was certain to provoke reactions – such as those that Cairo saw at several places on Friday. What is emerging are both the militant and peaceful sides to Muslim Brotherood opposition to the military regime that overthrew Morsi."As long as the military coup stays, more blood and violence will continue."

The militant front has been rising in the east. Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohammed Al Beltagy made clear statements to suggest that violence in the Sinai would end only with the reinstatement of Morsi.

Ibrahim el Mini’ai, head of the Sinai tribes union said that military head General Abdel Fatah al-Sisi is ultimately responsible for attacks on the army and police in Sinai. “Al Sisi is responsible for what Egypt suffers now from such violence, after killing peaceful demonstrators just because they were supporting legitimacy,” he said.

El-Mini’ai said Islamists in Sinai were resorting to lethal attacks because the revolution has ended and the old Hosni Mubarak regime is gradually returning. “Jihadi militants are now ready for blood sacrifice in order to apply the Islamic Shari’a, even if they have to call for foreign powers, whatever they are.”

El-Mini’ai, who is known with his strong connections with armed groups in Sinai added that “as long as the military coup stays, more blood and violence will continue.”

The brutal policies of the present regime, he said, are eliminating moderate political parties. “Only the extremists will keep going.”

In Sinai, Jihadi salafists were evidently provoked after four members of the Ansar Beit al-Maqdes linked to al-Qaeda in Sinai were killed by the military Aug. 9.

According to Egyptian officials 31 people including 10 civilians and 21 policemen and army officers were killed in militant attacks in Sinai in July. In all 157 were reported injured.

Army spokesperson Colonel Ahmed Ali told IPS that the attacks in Sinai increased after the deposition of the previous president because the political regime under Morsi refused action against radical militias in Sinai. The Morsi regime also released many radical elements involved in terrorist attacks against the Egyptian state, he said.

“The ousted president strongly enforced such militant groups and used them against state institutions,” Ali told IPS.

“There is a direct relation between the Muslim Brotherhood and such terrorist groups in Sinai as per what Mohamed al-Beltagy said. The attacks on the army and police in Sinai will stop as soon as Morsi is reinstated as president.”

He added that there are an estimated 1,000 Jihadi militants in Sinai.

Ibrahim Suliman, a salafist who is a fugitive from the death penalty, told IPS: “We will not stop the violence in the Sinai before the crisis is resolved in Cairo between the Muslim Brotherhood and the military in a political manner. If the police continue to kill Morsi supporters, this will turn Sinai into a battleground. If the military commanders do not find a solution, the whole of Egypt will be in ruins.”

Ayman Moussa “Abu Talha”, a salafist jihadi militia leader told IPS that the army leaders and the current regime had turned unlawfully against a legitimate president, and that Morsi must be brought back to the power at any cost.

“The majority in Sinai would want to apply an Islamic caliphate state of governance and consider killing for the sake of this end as a jihad,” he told IPS.

Abu Talha said that the military alliance with Israel and the Palestinian Fatah is being used against the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt and Hamas in Gaza.

Members of the Rights and Freedoms Working Group at a meeting in Sana’a. Credit: Luke Somers/IPS.

By Shuaib Almosawa
SANA’A, Aug 16 2013 (IPS)

As he gets ready to go to a café in Yemen’s capital Sana’a, Husam tucks his long tresses inside a hood before getting into the back of his friend’s car.

“Still problematic,” his friend tells him, assessing him in the rear view mirror. Husam pushes his hair further inside. A short drive ahead, they stop at a checkpoint, one of the many that keep an eye on Sana’a’s heavy traffic. A soldier grabs a torch, shines it on Husam. His long lashes blink in the harsh light.

Husam, now 19, left home for good about a year ago, after having spent much of his childhood under semi-house arrest. “My family didn’t like my (feminine) looks,” he told IPS.

“In practical terms,” Brian Whitaker, former Middle East editor at The Guardian and author of Unspeakable Love: Gay and Lesbian Life in the Middle East, told IPS, “the biggest problem is the attitudes of families and society rather than the law itself.”

It’s not easy being gay in Yemen. The country’s conservative society has no place for them in its midst, the law sees homosexuality as a crime punishable by death, while the extremists take things into their own hands, killing homosexual men.

Some eight men have been killed on the streets of Yemen in recent months for being gay. The attackers are believed to be members of the al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Exerting control over most of south Yemen, AQAP members go about imposing their own laws on locals.

Killing people with homosexual orientation is part of the mandate they have set out for themselves.

A security officer and resident of al-Huta region in Lahj province, some 350 km to the southeast of Sana’a, confirmed to IPS the recent news of three youths killed by AQAP. The families of the gay men apparently informed the authorities, but no action was taken.

“Ansar al-Sharia has been working on killing them (gays), but the government has taken no action,” the security officer told IPS on condition of anonymity. There were similar killings of gays last year as well, he added, but they were not reported.

Yemeni law is governed by the principles of the Sharia. Under this Islamic law the punishment for sodomy, said Ahmed al-Hasani, a Yemeni writer and law graduate, is a whipping of a hundred strokes for each partner if they are unmarried, along with imprisonment of up to one year. If the presumed offenders are married, punishment is stoning to death.

The punishment for lesbianism is imprisonment not exceeding three years.

This criminalisation of homosexuality has driven international rights groups to call on the Yemeni government to end laws that treat same-sex relationships as a crime. International advocacy group Human Rights Watch (HRW) said it has raised the issue with the Yemeni government.

Letta Tayler, a senior researcher at HRW, told IPS, “We have raised this issue in writing and in direct advocacy meetings with Yemeni government officials, but have not received any commitment to changing the law.”

The U.N. Human Rights Committee and Amnesty International have also asked the Yemeni government to repeal laws which provide for, or could result in, prosecution and punishment of people because of their sexual orientation.

Fouad al-Ghaffari, an aide to Yemen’s minister of human rights, said the ministry is not aware of any communication from international human rights groups.

“We don’t have gays in Yemen,” he said, reiterating the official position on the subject.
The culture of denial continued at the complaints department of the ministry, where an official said he did not know of any records of prosecution or detention of any gay people.

However, as many as 316 gay men have been arrested in the last two years on charges of homosexuality, according to official reports obtained by IPS from a security source under condition of anonymity.

These arrests were made across 18 of Yemen’s provinces, with 95 cases in 2011 and 63 in 2012. Each case, explained the security officer, means the arrest of two gay persons.

Even advocacy for the LGBT community is considered profanity in Yemen, and treated as a crime. Local rights groups working for the community have to operate in anonymity. Homophobia creates its own obstacles, as with one group which has been trying to raise HIV awareness among people, including gays.

Established in 2007, this group estimates Yemen has close to 35,000 people with HIV, though there is no specific number for gays. Their outreach programme involves providing training courses for the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV, as well as conducting free HIV tests.

But, as an official from the group says, “The majority of the gay community has no idea of the health risks associated. The illiteracy rate [among gays] is high; there are gays who have no idea what a condom is.”

“Being visible is the first step!” Twenty-three-year-old Ala’a Jarban, a young activist, declared his homosexuality a couple of months back on his blog. At the forefront of the 2011 youth movement in his country, Jarban is now in Canada, paying the price for his openness by seeking asylum.

“I’m angry at all this institutionalised violence against our existence,” he had said on his blog, “angry for being fated to death by strangers, by those in power in governments.”

“Although a lot of comments about Ala’a have been hostile, things like this do help break down taboos about discussing homosexuality and, in the longer term, can lead to people questioning homophobia,” said Whitaker.

He and others hope that the new Yemeni constitution being shaped during the two-year transition period will include some human rights clauses.

But the committee tasked with recommending and receiving freedom- and rights-related laws said no one has brought up the subject of homosexual rights so far.

“No one has suggested we endorse such [homosexual] rights, neither have we done so ourselves,” Arwa Othman, chairwoman of the Rights and Freedoms Working Group, one of the nine groups of the National Dialogue Conference mandated with the shaping of a new system for Yemen, told IPS.

“There is no way to discuss it,” Othman, a longstanding voice against Islamists, said. “Basic rights issues, which the West had tackled some 200 years ago, are still being debated and discussed now.” But also, she added, “many EU countries still impose a ban on gay marriage, after all.”