The NGO Reporters Without Borders published this Thursday its annual report on journalists killed, detained, hostages and missing around the world. The number of professionals killed while exercising their profession has decreased, but the situation is mixed, particularly because of the war in Gaza where journalists pay a heavy price for the exercise of their profession.
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Paradoxical observation: while the conflict between Israel and Hamas is proving particularly deadly for journalists, the overall number of reporters killed in the world has never been so low since 2002, according to RSF. In 2023, 45 journalists lost their lives in the line of duty, compared to 61 last year, according to the annual report from Reporters Without Borders, published this Thursday. We have to go back more than twenty years to find a total lower than this year (33 in 2002), where more than a third of the losses are linked to the conflict in the Middle East, including 13 in Gaza alone. “ This in no way reduces the tragedy in Gaza but we observe a steady decline, far from the more than 140 journalists killed in 2012, then in 2013. “, mainly due to the wars in Syria and Iraq, RSF secretary general Christophe Deloire told AFP.
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Gaza: a complaint for “war crimes” before the ICC
The global count, stopped on December 1, “ does not include journalists killed off duty, those who were not killed as such, nor those whose circumstances of death remain unknown », Specifies Reporters Without Borders. This clarification explains the differences in the number of journalists killed in Gaza. The organization lists a total of “ 63 journalists killed » in the Middle East since the start of the Israel-Hamas conflict on October 7, whether or not related to their profession. In detail, in addition to the 13 journalists who died “ under Israeli fire » in Gaza, according to RSF, this war caused the death of three working journalists in Lebanon and another in Israel, killed by Hamas.
In November, RSF filed a complaint before the International Criminal Court for “war crimes” committed against journalists in Gaza and against the Israeli journalist. An AFP investigation, published last week, into the bombing which killed a Reuters video journalist in southern Lebanon on October 13, Issam Abdallahand injured six others, including AFP photographer Christina Assi, seriously injured, pointing to an Israeli tank shell.
Questioned on this subject, an Israeli army spokesperson stressed that the location where the journalists were located was “ an active combat zone “. Explinations ” not satisfactory “, according to Christophe Deloire, who believes that ” there are many elements for Israel to be faced with its responsibilities “.
The conflict in Ukraine, for its part, cost the lives of two journalists in 2023, including the AFP reporter Arman Soldin“ only journalist to have lost his life in a country other than his own » this year, out of a total of 11 since the Russian invasion of February 2022.
Read alsoDeath of journalist Arman Soldin in Ukraine: “He was driven by the mission to inform”
Progress in Latin America
The overall 2023 toll stands out for the “notable drop” in deaths in Latin America with six journalists killed, compared to 26 in 2022. Mexico, the deadliest zone for the profession behind Gaza, has four in 2023, compared to 11 the previous year. But that doesn’t mean security is improving for the press there. as demonstrated by the three kidnappings of reporters and the armed attacks against four journalists at the end of 2023 », notes the report.
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“ We have in fact an enormous drop, in any case, we can say very significant, in the number of journalists killed in the area, as in Latin America, and particularly in Mexico, where there were sometimes more than ten, twenty journalists killed by year, notes Anne Bocandé, editorial director of RSF, at the microphone of Achim Lippold, from the international service. There are, in fact, fewer this year. But we are tempering in terms of ”are journalists safer?” There is above all a phenomenon of self-censorship since, precisely, journalists have been so impacted by… Many have been killed, affected , particularly the previous year, in 2022. In fact, there is also a phenomenon of self-censorship of journalists in the area. We are really very cautious about the reasons for the decline in certain abuses against journalists; that does not mean, particularly in Mexico, that the climate is safer for the work of journalists. »
“ Given the record number of violence recorded in 2022, a certain number of journalists are more systematically calculating the risks to which they are exposed, which implies more self-censorship and the proliferation, in the area, of information black holes., adds the report. Moreover, out of a total of 84 journalists missing, almost one in three is Mexican, notes the NGO.
The number of journalists detained worldwide stands at 521, compared to 569 in 2022, with Belarus becoming “ one of the three largest prisons in the world with China and Burma », while Turkey and Iran practice repeated imprisonments.
Finally, 54 journalists are held hostage, compared to 65 in 2022.
(and with AFP)