November 02, 2017

International day to end impunity for crimes against journalists

editor:	Shira Jeczmien

In 2001, just one week after the terror attack of 9/11, a journalist for the US newspaper Sun, Boca Raton, opened an envelope that led him to his death. Known as the 2001 anthrax attacks, what killed Raton and another 4 was the bacteria anthrax; letters containing bacterial spores were mailed to several media offices and some Democratic senators across the US.

Just earlier this month, independent investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia was murdered in a car bomb near her home in Malta. Intimidating murders of journalists across the world continue to terrorise the fight to truth, freedom of speech and a media that relentlessly challenges our society.

On November 23rd, 2009, in the island of Mindanao in the Phillipines, 32 journalists were invited by regional vice mayor, Esmael "Toto" Mangudadatu, to cover the scheduled filing of his certificate of candidacy. En route in a convoy of vehicles, alongside 25 lawyers and relatives of the vice president, they were stopped, murdered, the women raped and ultimately buried in a mass grave, alongside the vehicles. Following the event, the largest massacre of journalists in recent history, the UN introduced the International day to end impunity for crimes against journalists.

Journalism is the crux for keeping society in check – and fearless journalism is what we rely on when the truth is continuously skewed, hidden, threatened and terrorised. Following the deaths of two French journalists in Mali on November 2nd 2015, Ghislaine Dupont and Claude Verlon, it was agreed by the UN that the day is commemorated on November 2nd.

The past 11 years saw the murder of 900 journalists worldwide; a crime not only against the futile loss of lives in the hands of malice, but against the very basic human right of freedom of speech. Frighteningly, over the past decade, only one in ten crimes committed against the media has led to conviction. “This impunity emboldens the perpetrators of the crimes and at the same time has a chilling effect on society including journalists themselves” writes the UN, leading to further impunity and generating an undercurrent of silence around world issues.

Just earlier this month President Trump continued his escalating one-sided war with the media, Tweeting “Why Isn't the Senate Intel Committee looking into the Fake News Networks in OUR country to see why so much of our news is just made up-FAKE!”

The UN’s resolution comes at a pressing time, where the media is not only scrutinised by the most powerful government in the world, but continuously fighting for its right of survival and the scrutiny in its reportage. This landmark resolution also urges member states to impose a more stable security network for its journalists to prevent violence, to ensure accountability, and to bring to justice those who commit crimes against journalists and media workers.

We’re living through a time when journalism isn’t just fighting for justice, it’s in a headlock struggle to legitimise its reporting. And for that, we need to come in unity for a media that counteracts the fake news epidemic.