It’s the time of the year when the safety of news media practitioners becomes the focus of global attention.
Consider these facts and figures compiled by UNESCO and other monitoring bodies:
• More than 1,700 journalists have been killed around the world since 2006.
• The figures tell us the toll is about 95 annually, or almost eight media workers every month.
• Close to 9 out of 10 deaths have remained judicially unresolved.
• In the Philippines, 117 journalists have been killed in the last 30 years, or an average of almost four annually.
• The killing rate in the country has made the Philippines one of the most dangerous countries for journalists.
• Just as alarming is the fact that almost 7 out of 10 of these cases have remained unsolved.
• The Philippines ranks eighth of the worst countries to when it comes to prosecuting killers of journalists as reflected in the records of the Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based media monitor.
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On Nov. 2, the global community marks the International Day To End Impunity in Crimes against Journalists, which the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed in 2013.
The UN Resolution of 2013 encourages member states to implement measures countering what it calls as “the present culture of impunity.”
The day was chosen to commemorate the killing of two French journalists in the African state of Mali in 2913.
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The observance this year focuses on the theme, “Safety of Journalists in Crises and Emergencies.”
The focus of the celebration, UNESCO said, “seeks to promote a broader discussion on the safety of journalists working in these contexts, including the prevention, protection and prosecution concerns of journalists affected by such challenges.”
Many media professionals and journalists “exercise their duties in highly dangerous contexts. Too many pay an unacceptably high price, including death, enforced disappearance, torture, unlawful detention, and kidnapping, for producing independent, reliable, and verifiable information,” UNESCO further said.
The organization continued:
Whether reporting on conflict, humanitarian disasters, climate or health crises, journalists continue to face disproportionate threats and higher levels of impunity for extrajudicial killings, torture, enforced disappearances and arbitrary detention, as well as intimidation and harassment, both offline and online.
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For us Filipinos, the observance kicks off a month-long commemoration as the days tick toward the 15th anniversary – on Nov. 23 – of the killing of 32 media workers and 26 others in an election-related violence in 2009.
The Maguindanao Massacre has been tagged as the world’s worst single-day mass murder of media workers. It is also the worst election-related violence in the Philippines.
The case took 10 years to reach the verdict of guilty for the primary suspects on multiple accounts of murder.
Despite the ruling, families of the victims continue to cry for justice.
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We join the UNESCO global campaign for justice and for changing the story of those tasked to share the story to the world. As UNESCO crusades, “It’s time to end impunity.”
Indeed, the end of impunity for crimes against journalists, as the organization emphasized, is one of the most complex challenges societies face as “it is precondition to guarantee freedom of expression and access to information for all citizens.”
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But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream! (Amos 5:24) | NWI
