2,658 journalists killed in last 30 years
NEW DELHI, 10 Dec: To mark the International Day for Human Rights on 10 December, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), the largest organization of professional journalists with 6,00,000 members in 150 countries, has published a reference document titled ‘White paper on global journalism’.
In addition to studies on freedom of expression, working conditions, youth or gender equality, the IFJ reports in this 62-page document that 2,658 journalists have been murdered since 1990, 42 of them in 2020, and 235 are currently in prison.
When the IFJ published its first annual report of killed journalists in 1990, very few anticipated that the ‘journalists killed list’ would still be going 30 years later, spanning the entire globe.
The IFJ was the first organization representing journalists to raise the alarm over their killing and chart their fate every year as they were targeted with impunity in every corner of the globe – brutalized, gunned down, kidnapped by the enemies of press freedom. The IFJ casualty toll included all journalists, freelance as well as support staff, such as drivers, fixers and translators, who died during newsgathering activities. This was unique in giving a fuller picture of the extent of casualties within the media workforce.
At the time IFJ started counting in 1990, the federation listed 40 journalists and media workers killed in that year.
Some believed that this was merely a blip. Sadly, this proved not to be. When aggregating all these numbers, the total adds up to a staggering 2,658 killed in the last thirty years. This equates to about two journalists or media workers killed every week.
