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PRESS FREEDOM: Record Number of Deaths for Expressing Ideas
By Alicia Fraerman
MADRID, May 3 (IPS) - Last year, merely for doing their job, 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 Castelló 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 organisation 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 daily in Cuba,
Haiti and Colombia.
Cuba's President Fidel Castro tried to put an end to the 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 the 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 José Araújo, 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 Guantánamo prison
(located 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 José
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 organisation 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 Séverine 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 organisation'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, Castelló
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 organisation 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
Castaño, 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. (END/2004)
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