Since the start of the war in Gaza on October 7, 17 journalists have been killed in the exercise of their profession—13 in Palestine and three in Lebanon due to Israeli attacks, in addition to another in Israel, during the Hamas incursion. , according to the annual report of Reporters Without Borders (RSF) published this Thursday. The international organization denounces an “unprecedented massacre.” Despite these terrible figures, the global downward trend has made 2023, with a total of 45 deaths, the least deadly year for communicators in two decades.
“This 2023 has been a catastrophic year due to the massacre of journalists in Gaza, which we will hardly be able to forget,” Alfonso Bauluz, president of RSF Spain, condemns in a statement. The report – which includes data up to December 1 – takes into consideration only those murdered in the context of their profession. If you count all the journalists killed in the war in Gaza, including those whose deaths cannot be linked to their coverage of the conflict or their profession; the figure rises to 63, according to RSF, a number that supports the Committee to Protect Journalists.
In October, the organization presented a complaint to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes for the murder of nine Palestinian journalists and one Israeli, in addition to the “deliberate” destruction of buildings that housed more than 50 media outlets in Loop. It is the third time since 2018 that RSF has filed a complaint with the CFI for crimes committed against journalists in the Strip.
Irene Khan, UN Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression, points out, following the RSF publication, that journalism “is under attack.” “Despite the responsibility of protecting journalists, I have been told that wearing a jacket with the word 'press', far from protecting them, often makes them a target,” Khan explains in a message to EL PAÍS. According to her, “the courage and resilience” of communicators had rarely been tested “in a more terrible and tragic way than in Gaza.”
Even with the gloomy outlook in the Palestinian enclave, with the highest numbers “ever recorded by RSF at the beginning of a conflict,” the last year has been the least deadly for journalists since 2002. During the first 11 months, 45 journalists were murdered. , 26.2% less than the previous year. The downward trend is explained, according to the report, by “greater security” for journalists in Latin America, where the number fell from 26 to six in a single year.
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The case of Mexico stands out, where four reporters were murdered in 2023, less than half of the 11 who were executed the previous year; All of them were investigating organized crime in the North American country. RSF warns that the decline in violence does not necessarily imply more guarantees for journalists, but that professionals now “calculate more systematically the risks to which they are exposed, which means an increase in self-censorship and the proliferation of region of informational black holes”.
The other countries in which RSF records murders of journalists are concentrated in Africa (Sudan, Mali and Cameroon), America (Mexico, Colombia and Paraguay) and Asia (Afghanistan, Bangladesh and the Philippines). In Europe, two journalists died while covering the war in Ukraine in 2023. One of them was Arman Soldin, a Franco-Bosnian reporter for Agence France Presse, the only one who has died this year in a country other than his own.
Hundreds imprisoned
The new year will begin with 521 journalists imprisoned, 9% less than the 569 who were behind bars in 2022. One in four of the reporters in prison are in China (121) ―which repeats once again as the largest prison for informants in the world―, with a special punishment against communicators who belong to the Uyghur ethnic group. They are followed by Burma (68), Belarus (39) and Vietnam (36). More than half of them are still pending trial.
In Russia, increasingly repressive against opponents of the Kremlin, there are 28 reporters, among whom the case of the American Evan Gershkovich, correspondent of The Wall Street Journal. He was arrested in March on charges of espionage and has been held in solitary confinement in a Moscow jail. In October, Russian-American journalist Alsou Karmasheva, who worked for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, was arrested for not having been accredited as a “foreign agent.”
Of the global number of incarcerated people, 67 are women. Six of the eight highest sentences have been handed down against journalists in countries such as Iran, Belarus and Burundi. RSF highlights the situation in Iran, where five of the 31 journalists remain imprisoned for their coverage of the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement, which originated after the death of Mahsa Amini, in September 2022, when she was in police custody. Likewise, the Iranian regime detains activist Narges Mohammadi, who will be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2023.
The report also warns of the 54 journalists who remain captive – of which almost half are in the hands of the Islamic State – and of 84 missing reporters, seven more than last year.
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