Press freedom under attack on every continent, reports WAN-IFRA review

At least 33 journalists have been killed since January 2010, a WAN-IFRA review of the last six months, has reported. Ninety-nine were killed in 2009.

"Hundreds of media employees have been arrested in 2009 and at least 140 remain in jail today, most often following sham trials or without charges against them. Hundreds more have been forced into exile," the World Press Freedom review states.

The Americas saw the the highest number of deaths: five in Mexico, six in Honduras and one in Colombia. In Asia, nine journalists were killed; and in sub-Saharan Africa, seven. Two were killed in the Middle East and three in Europe and Central Europe.

Among the deaths reported was that of Rupert Hamer, a journalist for the Sunday Mirror, who was the first British journalist to be killed in Afghanistan.

Today (Monday) the report was due to be presented to the WAN-IFRA board which is currently meeting in Düsseldorf, Germany.

"The story of each one of them is different, but all are fundamentally the same too. They were sanctioned for pursuing the human right to inform and to express ideas freely – the condition for achieving any other right," says the report.


The previous World Press Freedom review, for the last six months of 2009, was presented ahead of the World Newspaper Congress, World Editors Forum and Info Services Expo in India last December, and recorded that more than 750 journalists have been murdered world-wide in the past decade.

It said that the 2009 attack in the Philippines, in which more than 30 journalists were among the 57 murdered, was the 'deadliest single attack on media in memory'.

The new review, released today, updates that over 200 people were indicted on 9 February for involvement in the November 2009 massacre.

"Authorities have been asked to act swiftly to protect eyewitnesses who fear they will be targeted in a case that allegedly involves local police, military and political personnel."

Echoing last week's plea by Amnesty International UK, for more attention to the plight of media workers in Burma, the WAN-IFRA review reports that the ruling junta "continues its clampdown against opposition media, with long-term prison sentences handed down to journalists who release information to foreign sources."

• The report can be read in full at this link.

WAN-IFRA's congress 2010 was due to be held in Lebanon this week, but was cancelled due to financial difficulties.

For more press freedom updates, follow Journalism.co.uk's @press_freedom service on Twitter and our global timeline with aggregated content from various journalism organisations.

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