RSF: "Journalists are no longer just victims of" the risks of the profession ""
During an RSF support demonstration for Khaled Drareni, October 15, 2020 in Paris.
AFP - STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN
Text by: Christophe Paget Follow
5 mins
In the annual report of the Reporters Without Borders association, we learned on December 29 that in 2020, 50 journalists were killed around the world.
The majority were not killed in war zones: 34 of these journalists were assassinated in peaceful countries… The explanations of Pauline Adès-Mével, editor-in-chief and spokesperson for Reporters Without Borders.
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RFI: Pauline Adès-Mével, today it is therefore in countries at peace that we kill the most journalists.
Pauline Adès-Mével
: This is a trend that is indeed being confirmed.
On the one hand, because the war grounds are a little neglected - in Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan or Iraq, there are fewer journalists who come from abroad, and therefore fewer collateral victims of these conflicts;
and above all journalists who work on disturbing issues, who investigate corruption, are increasingly targeted.
Today Reporters Without Borders can say that journalists are no longer only victims of "the risks of the profession", but clearly attacked because they are investigating sensitive issues that bother governments.
And it is precisely because of the investigations into sensitive issues that Mexico is the country where, this year, the most journalists have been killed.
Surprising as it may seem, Mexico, a country at peace, a country also where corruption rages with cartels of course, saw eight journalists killed on its soil in 2020 - there were ten last year in 2019, ten also in 2018 ... So this is a trend that is confirmed and which is extremely worrying.
They are journalists who investigate organized crime, cartels, drugs.
One journalist has been beheaded, another cut into pieces… It's intentional, it sends a message of dissuasion to other journalists.
According to Reporters Without Borders, these states are not doing enough to combat these phenomena.
Some even cover these criminal networks that murder journalists.
In any case, as far as Mexico is concerned, being the first country in the world where journalists are killed should normally call for an extremely strong response: this is not the case today.
There are countries which are committed to fighting more against impunity, as we recall every year, but this is unfortunately not the case everywhere.
And even, in Iran, the state killed a journalist.
Absolutely.
A few days ago Rouhollah Zam, a director of the Telegram Amadnews channel, first kidnapped during a stay in Iraq in 2019 and then sentenced to death after a totally unfair trial, was executed by hanging: a barbaric punishment, which had not been carried out on Iranian soil for 30 years.
And a terrible message: when the Iranian authorities decide on this sanction, they carry it out.
Today we are at the end of December, a period of the year when certain States take advantage of this period of truce to lock up journalists.
So we at RSF must continue to be extremely vocal, to denounce all the abuses, all the imprisonments of journalists, especially during these periods when the world is a bit at a standstill.
So, the Coronavirus is also putting the world at a standstill, and in fact you note that there was an increase in the arrests of journalists during the first confinement.
The number of arrests and arrests has quadrupled during the months of March to May 2020 compared to the rest of the year.
This pandemic was extremely violent for everyone.
And some states have in fact taken advantage of this state of shock to pass extremely coercive measures, measures which in particular hamper press freedom.
There has been a kind of shutdown of the planet, some states have allowed themselves to hinder journalists, in any case to stop them much more easily.
Finally, you speak in your report of a "new fact", the death of journalists covering demonstrations: seven journalists killed in Iraq, Nigeria and Colombia…
Journalists covering the protests are subject to many, many attacks today.
First from the demonstrators, because journalists do not necessarily convey the message they would like to hear;
and it is considered that, as some leaders themselves engage in regular attacks against journalists, we can in a way be galvanized by these speeches and act with complete impunity, since some leaders do so.
In addition, the demonstrations are extremely numerous.
And we see that the level of violence of the police everywhere in the world is much higher: we hit, we mutilate journalists because, in the same way, they convey a message that does not correspond to what the we want to hear, at least what the authorities want to hear.
For example, in Algeria, RSF correspondent Khaled Drareni has been detained for nine months for covering the Hirak protest movement, along with other journalists.
It does not please, because we must not talk about this protest movement ... So we locked him up.
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