Global Journalist

Journalism: A killing field

By Vibeke Sperling and Michael Seidelin Posted Jan 1 2004

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Alexei Sidorov, editor of the Togliatti Review, a newspaper in the Volga River city of 700,000 in Russia, was stabbed to death in front of his apartment on Oct. 7. Sidorov's paper had been investigating organized crime and corruption in Togliatti, the home of Russia's largest automaker, AvtoVaz.

He had also been investigating the killing of his predecessor, Valery Ivanov. Ivanov was shot dead on April 29, 2002, and that murder, like almost all the 200 killings of journalists in Russia since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, had gone unpunished.

Official investigators decided later that Sidorov had been drinking on his way home from the Review office and was killed in a drunken brawl unrelated to his work. Rimma Mikhareva, deputy editor of Togliatti Review, said, “They are trying to wrap up the investigation as soon as possible. Alexei left the office around 9 p.m.” He was stabbed 50 minutes later in front of his house. There was no time for him to drink and brawl along the way.

Not only in Russia but throughout the world, authorities take more interest in criminal investigation of journalists than in bringing those who kill them to justice. Hundreds of journalists are jailed each year for libel, defamation, corruption, tax fraud or other alleged criminal acts. But, according to the International Federation of Journalists, less than five percent of killers of journalists have been brought to justice in the past 10 years. What a trifle. The International Press Institute reports at least 53 journalists have lost their lives while working so far this year; 54 were murdered last year as a consequence of their work; 55 in 2001 and 56 in 2000. These figures show a constantly high number of casualties among journalists during the last decade.

“The number of criminal cases opened against journalists in the three years of Vladimir Putin's rule is more than the number during the entire 10 years of Boris Yeltsin's reign,” says Oleg Panfilov of the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations in Moscow. Last year, Panfilov's center registered 27 criminal cases against journalists. Panfilov says the arrests give criminals the impression they are free to hunt down journalists.

The tendency to make criminals of journalists rather than protect them was also clearly seen in the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan during the presidential election in October. More than 20 were brought to hospitals after attacks from security forces as they tried to cover the riots following the election. Charges have been raised against journalists in Baku alleging responsibility for the violence, but none against security forces for assaults on them.

Defamation laws are used to silence journalists in the new republics of the former Soviet Union. Laws granting free speech are forgotten. Frequent attacks on journalists in most cases go unpunished. In the semi or open dictatorial societies in Central Asia, the war on terrorism has been clearly taken as a change to strike harder on the opposition under the pretext of fighting terrorism. The support of these regimes given to the international anti-terror alliance and opening of their territories to U.S. and other foreign troops during the war on the Taliban in Afghanistan has minimized the international criticism of the intensified oppression of freedom of speech.

Ernest Nazalov, correspondent of the newspaper Kyrgyz Ruhu in Kyrgyzstan, was found dead in September in a river in the Osh region. Police officials said his body showed no signs of injury, but Nazalov's father said he had stab wounds and a broken hand. At the time of his death, Nazalov was investigating official corruption in the region. According to sources, two people beat Nazalov two weeks prior to his death and seized documents related to his investigations. He was threatened with charges of “insulting officials” by investigators who have ruled his murder “an accident.”

International pressure and support for local news organizations can help to bring punishment of criminals attacking journalists. The Inter American Press Association began an “Impunity” Program to bring killers of journalists to justice six years ago. It has generated attention internationally and keeps news organizations focused on the problem. Still, there are 46 unsolved murders of journalists on its Web site.

Last September, a jury in the Brazilian town of Itabuna, Bahia state, sentenced one of the killers of an editor to 18 years in prison. The police are also seeking a second presumed killer.

Journalists from all over the world followed the trial after the murder of Manoel Leal de Oliveira, 67-year-old editor-in-chief of the weekly newspaper A Região in Itabuna as far back as January 1998. Leal had exposed the irregular dealings of Itabuna's mayor, Fernando Gomes, in several articles, using excellent sources. Attacks on the mayor, several town officials and policemen were based on accounts in official documents.

The day before his murder, Manoel Leal received several threats.

“They wouldn't go so far as to kill me,” he said. But they did. The local police showed little interest in finding the killers and the men behind them. It looked like a typical case of impunity: Witness was killed; important witnesses were not contacted by the police; documents disappeared and the mayor, accused by the murdered editor, was not questioned. The local police closed the case in September 1998, and the people around the mayor and the ruling party were satisfied.

The case was re-opened in April 2000 after several critical articles in the newspaper A Tarde. Reporter Marconi de Souza investigated where the local police had not and named former Mayor Fernando Gomes and some of his aides as the men behind the murder of Leal. Press organizations sent journalists to help with the further investigation. This work, combined with the changing political climate in Bahia province as well as on federal level, helped bring the case forward but not without difficulties and setbacks. Impunity has been weakened in Brazil. But not destroyed. Mayor Gomes and his associates are still not brought to trial. The man convicted last September was an assistant to Mayor Gomes and a policeman, Mozart de Costa Brasil. That suggests the murder was by City Hall and law enforcement officials, but the investigation goes on slowly if at all. Since 1991, more than 15 journalists, often after investigating local powerful politicians or businessmen, have been killed in Brazil. The circumstances of killings of journalists also point at authorities as guilty in many other countries. Parmanand Goyal, reporter for the newspaper Punjab Kesari, was shot dead in September by unknown assailants outside his home in Kaithal, Haryana state, India. He had received threats after criticizing the police and Haryana chief minister. Officials have done nothing to find the killer. Another area where officials both hunt journalists and tacitly encourage others to do so is the Middle East. Ten journalists have been killed during the Intifada brought by Palestinians against Israel. There have been 116 more incidents in which journalists were injured by gunfire or shelling. Shootings, beatings, censorship, threats and other forms of obstruction in carrying out their profession are normal conditions for journalists in the area. The attacks have come from different Israeli and Palestinian groups, including soldiers, police, settlers and civilians.
The overwhelming majority of targeted journalists have been Palestinians, including eight of the 10 killed. “Perhaps the most worrisome aspect of this conflict is that Israeli authorities have implicitly condoned the attacks on the media by effectively promising soldiers immunity for such crimes, or even by ordering them to carry out violations,” said an IPI press release concerning this year's Intifada Report.

The United States and Israel are the only countries evaluated in two categories of the 2003 update of the RSF Index on press freedom. They rank 31st and 44th respectively as regards respect for freedom of expression in their own territory, but they fall to the 135th and 146th positions as regards behavior beyond their borders.

“The Israeli Army's repeated abuses against journalists in the occupied territories and the U.S. Army's responsibility in the death of several reporters during the war in Iraq constitute unacceptable behavior,” RSF writes.

The world's attention is focused on countries like Israel and Russia and on war zones like Iraq. There, attacks, harassment or strict press control are given international attention. But countries — like Eritrea, 162nd on RSF's Index (number four from the bottom) and Guatemala, number 99 – are forgotten.

Eritrea was called the “biggest journalist prison in the world” in 2002 by RSF. Eighteen journalists were jailed, often on very vague or unknown accusations such as “treason” or criticism of the president or the ruling party. An important number of Eritrean journalists live in exile, and in January 2002 a group of exiled journalists created the Association of Eritrean Journalists in Exile. The European Parliament earlier this year adopted a resolution condemning suppression of a free and independent press in Eritrea.

There has been some modest progress on human rights in Guatemala since the end of the civil war in 1996. But journalists are still victims of violent attacks from right-wing, paramilitary groups. Obvious targets are journalists covering the civil war, its aftermath and the role of the paramilitary groups during and after the bloody war between 1954 and 1996. It is also very unhealthy business for journalists to investigate the living conditions, civil and social rights of the Indian population.

In October this year, four journalists from the daily newspaper Prensa Libre in Guatemala City were held as hostages for four days by members of a paramilitary group until the authorities accepted the demands of the group. These groups demanded payment for their “work” during the civil war.

The hostages were liberated, and the positive element in this story is the fact that the government has created a committee to investigate this and other crimes against journalists.

Kidnapping is becoming a common Guatemalan phenomenon, explains Iduvina Hernandez, director of the Association for the Study and Promotion of Security in a Democracy (SEDEM), which among other tasks deals with journalists' rights. Physical assaults are common, too. Juan Luis Font, editor in chief of the daily elPeriódico, has been attacked and has been threatened with kidnapping and murder. The president of the board of elPeriódico, Jose Ruben Zamora, was caught and tortured by unidentified men earlier this year, Hernandez told Danish journalists some weeks ago in Copenhagen.

elPeriódico and Prensa Libre are not revolutionary papers, but rather respected, conservative media. But the fact that they have opened their opinion pages to different political tendencies is enough to endanger their leadership and journalists. Behind this violence are first of all the former paramilitary groups, today linked to influential business and political interests in the country. The violence against media personal is mostly political but it is also linked to drug barons and mafia organizations in Colombia, another Latin-American country with disastrous conditions for journalists.

SEDEM in Guatemala earlier this year published a guidebook for journalists. One theme in the book is especially important: how to avoid kidnapping or murder.

Globally, journalists now have stronger and more effective pressure and monitoring groups, but intensified official repression of media in many countries makes life yet more dangerous for journalists.

The unwillingness or reluctance of authorities in even democratic countries in war like the United States and Israel – not to say authoritarian countries — to investigate killings of journalists inspires more killings. Journalists are targets, free for all.

Cases involving authorities of democratic countries are rare, but the war in Iraq has brought one to the fore. A Spanish court agreed to investigate the killing of Spanish cameraman José Couso. Couso, a cameraman with the private TV-channel Telecinco, was killed April 8 when an American tank fired at the Hotel Palestine in Baghdad, where many international journalists stayed.

For several months, the Couso family, supported by Spanish press organizations, demanded an investigation, accusing the tank crew of “war crimes.” The Spanish government refused, accepting U.S. explanations that his death was an accident. The family and some colleagues of Couso maintained that the American tank crew shot at the hotel to prevent journalists from witnessing what some, including Jon Sistiaga, later said was a “massacre” of Iraqi civilians.

Spanish journalists went on strike and stopped covering political debates and meetings as a protest against the government's reluctance to demand an open investigation. They now consider the decision by the Madrid court to investigate what is called “war crimes” an important victory.

This difficult case raises awareness about protection of journalists covering wars or other armed conflicts and their roles and working conditions.

Considering its brevity, no war in modern history has cost so many journalists their lives as the war in Iraq — at least 15 in the short period from the beginning of the war on March 19 until U.S. president, George W. Bush, declared the war over and the mission in Iraq accomplished on May 1. Most of them were killed by “friendly fire.” It indicates that journalists, to a larger degree than in earlier wars, are seen as legitimate targets, by the United States and its allies as well as from the other side.