About 105 journalists have been killed while doing their job this year, media watchdog Press Emblem Campaign said yesterday, describing the killing of reporters as an “epidemic with no cure.”
Fewer fatalities have been reported this year compared with last year when 122 journalists died, but the toll is nevertheless higher than the 91 deaths recorded in 2008.
“The killing of journalists has become an epidemic with no cure,” the watchdog’s secretary-general Blaise Lempen said.
“The international community has not found solutions to it, or put in place effective mechanisms for bringing the perpetrators of those crimes against journalists to trial,” he said.
Mexico and Pakistan are the two most dangerous countries this year. Fourteen journalists were killed in Mexico’s drug war, while another 14 fatalities were reported in Pakistan, most of them in the border areas with Afghanistan.
Nine journalists were killed in Honduras and eight have been killed in Iraq since the beginning of the year.
Over five years, about 529 journalists have been killed, with Iraq topping the list as the most dangerous country where more than a fifth of deaths occurred.
The watchdog’s president Hedayat Abdel Nabi pressed for action to better protect journalists: “Let’s move together in 2011 to achieve a well deserved bold step for journalists, 2011 could be the target date, then or never.”
Six journalists were killed in the Philippines this year, five in Russia and four each in Columbia, Brazil and Nigeria.
Indonesia, Nepal and Somalia each saw three journalists killed this year.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY STAFF WRITER
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