2008 Death toll down but still over 100
LAST YEAR 109 journalists and media staff were killed, according to the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ).
Iraq remained the most dangerous country, despite a drop in deaths from 65 in 2007 to 16 last year – all of them Iraqi nationals. Next most dangerous were Mexico and India with 10 deaths each.
Jim Boumelha, President of the IFJ and a member of the NUJ’s national executive, said: “This fall in the number of killings of journalists is good news. However, it provides little comfort to our colleagues around the world who continue to face risks to their life for doing their job.”
Diary of death
A WAVE of killings in the first days of 2009 undermined hopes that the falling death toll recorded last year was a sign of a change in the pattern of killings which have risen dramatically in recent years. Seventeen deaths had been reported by mid-February – including four killed in the Israeli bombardment of Gaza.
JANUARY 1: SOMALIA
RADIO REPORTER Hassan Mayow Hassan of Radio Shabelle was shot while covering clashes between Islamist militants and armed groups that support the transitional government. When he identified himself as a journalist a militant shot him in the head.
JANUARY 4: PAKISTAN
A SUICIDE bomber killed at least seven people, including two journalists, Mohammad Imran and Tahir Awan of local dailies Eitedal and Apna Akhbar. The bomber struck when police, watched by journalists, were examining evidence of an earlier explosion in Dera Ismail Khan, north west Pakistan.
JANUARY 8: SRI LANKA
LASANTHA WICKRAMATUNGA, editor in chief of the Sunday Leader, was shot after gunmen ambushed his car, smashed the windows and opened fire at close range. He was the sixteenth journalist killed in the past three years as war raged between the government and the Tamil Tigers. Lasantha Wickramatunga had been critical of the war against Tamil guerrillas and of government corruption. Before he died he had written an extraordinary article predicting his murder, which was published three days afterwards. He wrote: “It will be the government that kills me. Murder has become the primary tool whereby the state seeks to control the organs of liberty.”
JANUARY 11: NEPAL
JOURNALIST and feminist activist Uma Singh was attacked by 15 men in the room she rented in Janakpur, 240 km south east of Katmandu. She was battered repeatedly with sharp objects and died while being driven to hospital in the capital. She worked for the paper Janakpur Today and for Radio Today FM. She was noted for her articles criticising the dowry system in Nepal.
JANUARY 12: PARAGUAY
MARTÍN OCAMPOS PÁEZ, director of the Hugua Ñandu FM community radio station, was shot to death after making comments on the complicity of police and local officials with drug traffickers. He had received repeated threats.
JANUARY 16: VENEZUELA
OREL SAMBRANO, editor of the weekly magazine ABC, in Valencia in the state of Carabobo, was shot dead in broad daylight as he got out of his car. He was also the vice-president of an AM radio station and a columnist for the regional daily Notitarde. Orel Sambrano had received death threats in connection with his reports on drug trafficking.
JANUARY 19: RUSSIA
ANASTASIA BARBUROVA, a 25-year-old freelance reporter on the investigative weekly Novaya Gazeta, was killed by a hired assassin in a Moscow street. The target was the paper’s lawyer, Stanislav Markelov, but after he was gunned down Anastasia Barburova ran after the killer, who turned round and shot her dead. Stanislav Markelov was a leading liberal lawyer in Russia. He had just spoken at a press conference for the opposition Glasnost Defense Foundation, which Anastasia Barburova was covering.
JANUARY 29: KENYA
THE BEHEADED body of freelance Francis Nyaruri, who had written about police corruption for the independent Weekly Citizen, was found in a forest in western Kenya. He had been missing since January 15 and had received death threats.
FEBRUARY 2:
REPUBLIC OF CONGO
BRUNO OSSÉBI, a columnist for the online news service Mwinda known for writing about alleged high-level corruption, died two weeks after an unexplained fire at his home. His girlfriend and her two children were killed. Three days earlier Mwinda had published an interview with a political dissident exiled in France, Benjamin Toungamani – whose home was also torched the same day, though Benjamin Toungamani escaped unharmed.
FEBRUARY 4: SOMALIA
SAID TAHLIL AHMED, director of Horn Afrik Radio/TV, was shot in the head in the Bakara market of Mogadishu by unidentified gunmen suspected of belonging to militia groups operating in Somalia.
FEBRUARY 7: MADAGASCAR
ANDO RATOVONIRINA, a reporter for Radio et Télévision Analamanga was shot dead outside the presidential palace in Antananarivo. More than 20 people were killed when security forces fired on a demonstration against President Marc Ravalomanana’s government.
FEBRUARY 13: MEXICO
JEAN PAUL IBARRA RAMÍREZ, a crime photographer for the daily El Correo, was shot as he was travelling to cover a traffic accident. A reporter with him, Yenny Yuliana Marchán Arroyo of the daily Diario 21, was also shot, but survived.
GAZA
FOUR journalists died in Gaza during the Israeli assault from December 27 to January 16. They were:
Hamza Shahin, a photographer for the Shehab News Agency, who had been wounded in an earlier air attack.
Basel Faraj, a cameraman for the Algerian TV network ENTV and the Palestine Broadcasting Corporation, was wounded in an air strike on December 27 and died on January 6.
Eyhab Al Wahidi, another cameraman for the Palestine Broadcast Corporation, was killed on January 7 when Israeli troops shelled his home.
Alwan Radio broadcaster Alaa Murtaja died from injuries received when his house in the Zaitoun district was hit by tank fire on January 9.