We, prosecutors from very different countries who have all known cases of murders of journalists, are alarmed by the persistent impunity for perpetrators of crimes of violence against journalists and by the precarious security situation for journalists around the world, and the consequences of insecurity of journalists for the right of all citizens to news and information, brought together by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), are launching an appeal on the occasion of International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists.
According to RSF, more than 1,000 journalists and media workers have been murdered around the world since 2010. This year alone, 50 have already been killed.
According to UNESCO, nearly 90 percent of crimes of violence against journalists go unpunished. In Mexico, 88 percent of the murders of journalists remain unpunished and the perpetrators of these crimes are almost never convicted. In the Philippines, those who bear most of the responsibility for a massacre of 32 journalists in 2009 are still at large. The instigators of the murders of Norbert Zongo in Burkina Faso in 1998, Anna Politkovskaya in Russia in 2006, Gauri Lankesh in India in 2017, among many others, remain unpunished due to a culpable failure to investigate properly or even a cover-up.
Leaving a journalist’s murder unprosecuted is to trivialize it, encourage its repetition and threaten all journalists. Murdering a journalist undermines entire populations’ right to information, reduces the ability of citizens to form opinions and to take decisions freely and strikes at the very heart of human rights.
Prosecutors have a central role to play in ending this situation. Systemic and resolute prosecutorial investigations are essential to establish a free and safe environment for journalists. Murder cannot be tolerated as an occupational hazard.
We solemnly pledge to make every effort the situation requires. We undertake to implement the Guidelines for Prosecutors on Cases of Crimes Against Journalists that was compiled by UNESCO and the International Association of Prosecutors with contributions from RSF to assist investigations and prosecutions in the fight against crimes against journalists.
We make 10 specific commitments, we commit in particular to protect the independence and impartiality of our investigations into crimes and offenses against journalists, to take resolute and determined action to end impunity for crimes against journalists, or to systematically evaluate the relationship between the crime and the victim’s journalistic activities. We also commit to collaborate with our counterparts in other countries and at the international level in crimes with a transnational dimension.
The appeal and the 10 commitments are published on the RSF Web site.
The signatories of the appeal are from Brazil, Mexico, the Gambia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the UK, Slovakia and Serbia.
Laura Borbolla, former prosecutor of the Federal Prosecutor’s Office for Violations of Freedom of Expression in Mexico (Feadle), from 2012 to 2015, is currently a prosecutor in Mexico.
Raquel Dodge is a former attorney general of the republic in Brazil, serving between September 2017 and September 2019. She is known for her work against corruption, organized crime and for human rights. Brazil is ranked 110 out of 180 in the World Press Freedom Index for 2022.
Matus Harkabus is a prosecutor at the Special Prosecutor’s Office in Slovakia, currently working in the Organized Crime, Terrorism and Extremist Crimes Unit. He is in charge of the investigation into the murder of journalist Jan Kuciak in 2018.
Pascal Kake is a prosecutor at the Mahagi court in Ituri, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where eight journalists have been murdered in the past 10 years.
Predrag Milovanovic is senior assistant public prosecutor at the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Serbia. He requested and obtained the conviction in the first instance of the mastermind of the arson attack on the house of journalist Milan Jovanovic in 2018.
Charden Bedie Ngoto is a public prosecutor in the Republic of the Congo (Brazzaville), in Dolisie, the country’s third-largest city.
Hussein Thomasi is since December 2020 the solicitor general of the Gambia. In 2017, as special adviser to the minister of justice, he was instrumental in setting up the prosecution process for the 2004 murder of RSF and Agence France-Presse correspondent Deyda Hydara. The Gambia has made considerable progress in press freedom since the fall of former president Yahya Jammeh in 2016.
Ken Macdonald KC is a former director of Public Prosecution for England and Wales, the head of the Crown Prosecution Service from 2003 to 2008. He is currently principal of Wadham College, Oxford, and a Life Peer in the House of Lords, where he sits as an independent and was previously a Liberal Democrat.
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