Eight journalists die in one year in Mexico
A CRIME reporter shot dead in the border city of Ciudad Juárez became the eighth journalist to die in Mexico in 2008.
José Armando Rodríguez Carreón, who reported for the local daily El Diario, was shot at least eight times in his car parked inside his garage on November 13.
The paper said he had received a threatening text message in February telling him to “tone it down”. He was temporarily transferred to El Paso in Texas, but on his return he insisted on resuming work without special protection.
Because of the country’s poor record of prosecuting the killers of journalists, the Mexican Congress is considering legislating to make crimes against free expression a federal offence, a step backed by President Felipe Calderón.
More than 1,000 people, including journalists, police officers, doctors, lawyers and drug traffickers, were killed in drug-related crime in Ciudad Juárez in 2008.
... and six in the Philippines
TWO PRESENTERS on a Filipino radio station have been killed in less than a month.
Aresio Padrigao, a broadcaster at Radyo Natin (Our Radio) in Mindanao, had just dropped off his daughter at university on November 17 when he was killed by a gunman on a motorcycle.
He anchored a weekly show called Know the People, which often criticised local government corruption and illegal logging activities. He had received death threats.
A second Radyo Natin presenter, Leonilo Mila, died on December 2. Staff heard gunshots as he left work and his body was found soon after.
He hosted a morning programme and had been receiving death threats from officials because of his commentaries on local corruption.
He became sixth Filipino journalist to be killed in the line of duty in 2008.
NINETY-ONE trade unionists were murdered in 2007 for daring to campaign for better working rights in countries with violent histories of anti-union activity, according to the International Trade Union Confederation. The highest total was in Colombia, where 39 were killed.
Editor killed in Mumbai terror attack
A CONSULTING editor with Times of India, Sabina Seghal Saikia, was one of the victims of the terror attacks in Mumbai. Her body was found on the sixth floor of the fire-ravaged Taj Mahal Place Hotel.
She had been sending text messages to her husband Shantanu Saikia, a fellow journalist. In the last one she said she was trapped in a bathroom.
Sabina Seghal Saikia was also a noted food critic.
She was the fourth journalist to die in India in a month.
On November 17 Konsam Rishikanta, a 22-year-old sub with the Imphal Free Press was murdered in the north-eastern state of Manipur. His bullet-riddled body was found by police with his hands tied. He was blindfolded and gagged.
All newspapers in Manipur suspended publication indefinitely until the culprits are arrested. Journalists also staged a protest march to the Manipur Chief Minister’s office, demanding a judicial inquiry.
The sub had failed to turn up for the night shift after the paper had received mysterious calls asking if he had arrived for work.
On November 20 Jagjit Saikia, correspondent for the daily Amar Asom, was shot dead. Police said the murder appeared to be related to a local insurgency.
On November 25 Vikas Ranjan, a correspondent for the daily Hindustan, was killed by armed men on motorbikes as he left his office in Bihar. He had received death threats after articles on the trafficking of counterfeit merchandise and stolen goods.
Dawn arrest for French editor
VITTORIO DE FILIPPIS, former publisher of the centre-left French daily Libération, was arrested, handcuffed and insulted by police in a pre-dawn raid on his Paris home on November 30.
He was taken for questioning by a magistrate over a potential defamation case involving a reader’s contribution to the paper’s website in 2006. He was strip-searched twice. The arrest caused a political row over the police’s high-handed behaviour.
Police refused to comment but one officer told Le Monde that Vittorio de Filippis had apparently failed to respond to a summons and had “spoken arrogantly” to the arresting officers. The editor said he had objected to the 6.30 am raid and to being handcuffed in front of his children. The response from one officer, he said, was: “You are worse than scum” — the word notoriously used by President Nicolas Sarkozy to describe youths from deprived communities who rioted in the Paris suburbs.
Under French law the publisher of a newspaper is responsible for defamatory material, but the question of liability for website comments has not been legally established
The complaint was brought by an internet businessman, Xavier Niel, who has lost two cases against Libération.
TV journalists defy bosses, government
JOURNALISTS at the Korean TV channel YTN have been occupying the office of the company president for five months, in defiance of the owners and the government. Six union leaders have been sacked and other staff suspended, but they have refused to budge.
The dispute began in July when a new president, Gu Bon-hong, was appointed. He is a close associate of the president of Korea, Lee Myung Bak, and the journalists believe he was appointed to give the government control over the 24-hour news channel.
On his first day they blocked his entrance to the building and since then Gu Bon-hong has been working from an office outside. He has made several attempts to enter but each time has been blocked by the staff.
The International Federation of Journalists is backing the Journalists’ Association of Korea in the fight for editorial independence. IFJ President Jim Boumelha — a member of the NUJ’s national executive — visited the occupation in October to show support.
“These brave members are taking up a heroic fight to defend press freedom and editorial democracy,” he said.
“They have risked their careers by resisting political interference in the business of journalism and all journalists must applaud the action they have taken.”
Thai journalist attacked by both sides
THAILAND’S journalists received tough treatment during the massive anti-government protests that paralysed the country in November.
Many journalists and media outlets reported harassment, shootings and physical attacks by supporters of both the pro-royalist People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD) and the pro-government United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD).
Unidentified men fired grenades at the satellite TV station ASTV studios in Bangkok and another grenade attack four days later injured a newscaster.
ASTV is owned by the PAD leader Sondhi Limthongkul and was broadcasting live 24-hour coverage of its rallies.
PAD protesters themselves fired shots and threw a homemade bomb at the Bangkok studios of the pro-government station Taxi Radio, injuring two people.
UDD protesters surrounded the office of the pro-PAD Vihok radio in the northern city of Chiang Mai and killed station operator Therdsak Jiemkitwattana.
Reporters at the besieged Bangkok airport said that PAD protesters videotaped and searched them and confiscated cameras and film.
A photographer from the newspaper Thai Rath was attacked by PAD security guards after taking pictures of a PAD guard assaulting a man.
RIOT POLICE in Sudan arrested more than 60 journalists during a protest outside parliament against media censorship on November 17.
Newspapers are increasingly subject to pre-print or “proof” censorship, under which the security services visit offices and remove articles they deem problematic. The day after the arrests, 10 newspapers suspended publication for a day in protest. Columnists have also withdrawn their articles in protest.
Journalist Salah Bab Allah of the newspaper Al Entibaha is being held incommunicado after defying censors’ instructions to remove a story about the outbreak of fever in western Sudan. He put it on the front page.
THE FIRST Congress of the Federation of African Journalists was held in Nairobi in November. The FAJ is a part of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), to which the NUJ is affiliated.
The Congress was attended by delegates from 31 countries. The opening by Kenya’s Prime Minister Raila Odinga was broadcast live on state TV.
A BELGIAN TV reporter and his crew were harassed and beaten up by Chinese officials while trying to film a report on the country’s AIDS crisis. Journalist Tom Van De Weghe and the team from VRT, the Flemish public broadcast network, were working in Henan province when they were assaulted by officials who also seized their material and ordered them out of the area.
A SKELETON found in a wooded area in Nepal is believed to be that of missing journalist Jagat Prasad Joshi, according to the Federation of Nepali Journalists. Jagat Prasad Joshi was an editor of the daily Janadisha, which supports the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist). He was last seen in October.
THE NEWSPAPER Al Emirate Al Yaoum (Emirates Today) was suspended for 20 days by the Emirati court of appeal in November in a defamation case. The court also fined the editor-in-chief and chief executive officer £4,000 each. The case concerned a report in 2005 on doping of race horses at the Emirates-based Warsan Stables, which sued the paper.