Fiji human rights activists have paid tribute in a Suva vigil this week to the more than 100 journalists — most of them Palestinian — killed in Israel’s War on Gaza.

The NGO Coalition on Human Rights (NGOCHR) staged a #ThursdaysInBlack vigil to remember the dead journalists, but only one local Fiji reporter turned up (from The Fiji Times).

The coalition had invited local journalists to attend and share their views. However, according to coalition chair Shamima Ali (of the Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre), Fiji media is reluctant to engage with the global crisis over the war.

• READ MORE: Journalists need to ‘take a stand’ over the Gaza carnage after latest killings
• Israeli military accused of targeting journalists and their families in Gaza
• South Africa’s genocide case against Israel over Gaza ‘chilling’ in detail
• 101 days of horror in Gaza – NZ is now a legitimate target for protest against Israeli war crimes

“Within the media outlets, we have Zionists themselves, so there is reluctance to report (on the Gaza conflict),” she said, reports Jake Wise of The Fiji Times.

In Australia and New Zealand, there is an ongoing controversy over some journalists and editors having been on junkets to Israel and then attempting to “silence” fair and balanced reporting on the war enabling a Palestinian voice.

South Africa has taken Israel before the world’s highest court, the International Court of Justice, alleging breaches of the Genocide Convention

One media outlet, Crikey, has been publishing a public list “outing” the names of journalists “influenced” by Israeli media or government management — more than 77 names so far.  No similar list so far exists in New Zealand although there have been calls for one.

Part of the Fiji vigil featured Australian journalist Alex McKinnon, who shared insights into his life as a reporter covering the conflict and the censorship involved in silencing the Palestinian voice.

Heavy death toll
The coalition said more than 100 journalists, videographers and media workers had been killed in Gaza since the current war broke out last October 7, adding more journalists had been killed in three months of Israel’s War on Gaza than in all of World War Two (69) or the Vietnam War (63).

New investigations on U.S. and UK media bias have exposed chilling double standards by Western media when it comes to reporting on killings of Israelis compared to killings of Palestinians in Gaza. pic.twitter.com/uQ0I7cT340

— AJ+ (@ajplus) January 10, 2024

The high death toll in Gaza comes despite journalists being protected under international law — making attacks on them a war crime.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists says that an unprecedented number of reporters were killed in the first 10 weeks of the genocide. It currently lists 82 confirmed killed, but it is verifying additional numbers.

Gaza’s media office has documented the killing of at least at least 110 media workers since the genocide started. Al Jazeera today reported 117 journalists killed.

Last May, the CPJ published “Deadly Pattern,” a report that found members of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) had killed at least 20 journalists over the previous 22 years with impunity. Nobody had ever been charged or held accountable for their deaths.

The Israeli government has prevented independent entry to foreign journalists seeking to cover the genocide from within the Gaza Strip.

On December 22, the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders watchdog filed a second complaint with the International Criminal Court (ICC) alleging probable war crimes by Israel soldiers in the deaths of seven Palestinian reporters during the eight weeks ending December 15.

It has since been advised that the ICC would include the killings of journalists in its investigation of alleged war crimes by Israel.

Reporting Israel’s war on Gaza has become the greatest credibility challenge for journalists and media of our times. The latest assassination of an Al Jazeera photojournalist yesterday while documenting atrocities has prompted a leading analyst to appeal to global journalists to “take a stand” to protect the profession.

The killing of Hamza Dahdoud, the 27-year-old eldest son of Al Jazeera Gaza bureau chief Wael Dahdouh, along with freelancer Mustafa Thuraya, has taken the death toll of Palestinian journalists to 109 (according to Al Jazeera sources while global media freedom watchdogs report slightly lower figures).

Emotional responses and a wave of condemnation has thrown the spotlight on the toll faced by reporters and their families.

• READ MORE: War on Gaza: The voices that really matter are the journalists on the ground
• Israeli military accused of targeting journalists and their families in Gaza
• Safe zones: Israel’s technologies of genocide
• This Israel has no future in the Middle East – Marwan Bishara

Wael Dahdouh, 52, lost his wife, daughter, grandson and 15-year-old son on October 25 in an earlier Israeli air raid that hit the house they were sheltering in. After mourning for several hours, Dahdouh senior was back on the job documenting the war.

Just under 20 months ago, Al Jazeera’s best known correspondent, Shireen Abu Akleh, was fatally shot by an Israeli sniper while reporting on the Occupied West Bank on 11 May 2022 in what Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemned by saying this “systematic Israeli impunity is outrageous.”

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists protested about the killing of Hamza Dahdoud and Thuraya, saying it “must be independently investigated, and those behind their deaths must be held accountable”.

But few journalists would accept that this is anything other a targeted killing, as most of the deaths of Palestinian journalists in the latest Gaza war have been – a war on Palestinian journalism in an attempt to suppress the truth.

‘Nowhere safe in Gaza’
Certainly, Al Jazeera’s Palestinian-Israeli political affairs analyst and Marwan Bishara, who was born in Nazareth, has no doubts.

Speaking on the 24-hour Qatari world news channel, with at least 22,835 people killed in Gaza – 70 percent of them women and children — he said: “Nowhere is safe in Gaza and no journalists are safe . . . That tells us something.

“Killing the messenger”: Marwan Bishara’s interview with Al Jazeera — more tampering over the message? There is nothing “sensitive” in this clip.

“It is understood they are war journalists. But still the fact that more than 100 journalists were killed within three months is breaking yet another record in terms of killing children, and destruction of hospitals and schools, and the killing of United Nations staff.

“And now with 109 journalists killed this definitely requires a certain stand on the part of our colleagues around the world. Not just in a higher up institution.

“I am talking about journalists around the world – those who came to cover the World Cup in Doha for labour rights, or whatever. Those who are shedding tears in the Ukraine, those who are trying to cover Xinjiang in China [persecution of the Uyghur people], those who are claiming there are genocides happening right, left and centre – from China to Ukraine, to elsewhere.

“The same journalists who see in plain sight what is happening in Gaza should – regardless if we disagree on Israel’s motives, or Israel’s objectives in this war – must agree that the protection of journalists and their families is indispensable for our profession. And for their profession,” Bishara said.

“Journalists, and journalism associations and syndicates around the world – especially in those countries with influence on Israel, as in Europe, or the United States; journalists need to take a stand on what is going on in Gaza.

New investigations on U.S. and UK media bias have exposed chilling double standards by Western media when it comes to reporting on killings of Israelis compared to killings of Palestinians in Gaza. pic.twitter.com/uQ0I7cT340

— AJ+ (@ajplus) January 10, 2024

‘Cannot go unanswered’
“This cannot continue and go on unanswered. What about them?

“They’re going to be from various media outlets deploying journalists in war-stricken areas. They will have to call for the defence of journalists and their lives and their protection.

“This cannot go on like this unabated in Gaza,” Bishara added, as Israeli defence officials have warned the fighting could go on for another year.

The South African genocide case filed against Israel in the International Court of Justice seeking an interim injunction for a ceasefire and due for a hearing later this week could pose the best chance for an end to the war.

Bishara has partially blamed Western news networks for failing to report the war on Gaza accurately and fairly, a criticism he has made in the past and his articles about Israel are insightful and damning.

His call for a stand by journalists has in fact been echoed in some quarters where “media bias” has been challenged, opening divisions among media groups about fairness and balance that have become the most bitter since the climate change and covid pandemic debates when media “deniers” and “bothsideism” threatened to undermine science.

In November, more than 1500 journalists from scores of US media organisations signed an open letter calling for integrity in Western media’s coverage of “Israeli atrocities against Palestinians”.

Israel has blocked foreign press entry, heavily restricted telecommunications and bombed press offices. Some 50 media headquarters in Gaza have been hit in the past month.

Israeli forces explicitly warned newsrooms they “cannot guarantee” the safety of their employees from airstrikes. Taken with a decades-long pattern of lethally targeting journalists, Israel’s actions show wide scale suppression of speech.

In the United Kingdom, eight BBC journalists wrote an open letter in late November to Al Jazeera accusing the British broadcaster of bias in its coverage of Gaza.

A 2300-word letter claimed that the BBC had a “double standard” and was failing to tell the Israel-Palestine conflict accurately, “investing greater effort in humanising Israeli victims compared with Palestinians, and omitting key historical context in coverage”.

What is next? He lost everyone!!! Literally!!! #GazaGenocide pic.twitter.com/1LVh4eruIt

— Palestine News (@palestine) January 7, 2024

In Australia, another open letter by scores of journalists and the national media union MEAA called for “integrity, transparency and rigour” in the coverage of the war and joined the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), RSF and others condemning the Israeli attacks on journalists and journalism.

Leading Australian newspaper editors of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age and the Nine network hit back by banning staff who had signed the letter. According to the independent Crikey, a senior Nine staff journalist resigned and readers were angrily cancelling their newspaper subscriptions over the ban.

Crikey later exposed many editors and journalists who had made junket trips to Israel and is currently keeping an inventory of these “influenced” media people — at least 77 have been named so far.

In The Daily Blog, editor Martyn Bradbury has also questioned how many New Zealand journalists have also been influenced by Israeli media massaging. Bradbury wrote:

“If Israel has sunk that much time and resource charming Australian journalists and politicians, the question has to be asked, [has] the pro-Israel lobby sent NZ journalists and politicians on these junkets and if they have, who are they?”

He wrote to the NZ Press Gallery, the “journalist union” and media companies requesting a list of names.

Pacific journalists ought to be also added to the list.

I have just returned from a two-month trip in the Mediterranean, Red Sea and Australia. After a steady diet of comprehensive and well backgrounded reporting from global news channels such as TRT World News and Al Jazeera (which contrasted sharply in quality, depth and fairness with stereotypical Western coverage such as from BBC and CNN), I was stunned by the blatant bias of much of the Australian news media, particularly News Corp titles such as The Australian and The Advertiser in Adelaide.

Some examples of the bias and my commentaries can be seen here, here, here, here, here and here.

A pithy indictment of much of the Western reporting — including in New Zealand — can be read in the Middle East Eye and other publications.

Exposing much of the Israeli propaganda and fabricated claims since October 7 (and even from time of The Nakba in 1948), award-winning columnist Peter Osborne wrote:

“I am haunted by one other consideration. It is not just that Western commentators, columnists and chat show hosts often don’t know what they are talking about. It’s not even that they pretend they do.

“It’s the comfort of their lives. They sit in warm, pleasant studios where they earn six-figure sums for their opinions. They take no risks and convey no truths.”

A polar opposite from the Gaza carnage and the risks that courageous Palestinian journalists face daily to bear witness. They are an inspiration to the rest of us.

Dr David Robie is editor and publisher of Asia Pacific Report and Café Pacific.

Hamza Dahdouh, son of Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief Wael Dahdouh, has been killed along with another journalist in an Israeli air strike west of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, the news channel reports.

The 27-year-old photojournalist was killed when a missile directly hit the vehicle he was travelling in to “document new atrocities” in the latest Israel attack.

Gaza’s media office condemned the killing of two more Palestinian journalists, describing it as a “heinous crime” committed by the “Israeli occupation army against journalists”.

• READ MORE: Why NZ should join South Africa’s genocide case against Israel
• Israel is eradicating journalism in Gaza, with ten reporters killed in three days

Hamza Dahdouh and colleague Mustafa Thuraya, who has worked as a journalist for Agence France-Presse news agency, were in the car at the time it was targeted, Al Jazeera reports.

Thuraya also died.

Wael Dahdouh, 52, lost his wife, daughter, grandson and 15-year-old son in October in an Israeli air raid that hit the house they were sheltering in.

Dozens of journalists have been killed in the Israeli strikes since the war began on October 7 and Al Jazeera reports that a total of 109 Palestianian journalists have died.

Journalists ‘being targeted’
Interviewed live on Al Jazeera, another AJ correspondent, Hani Mahmoud, described the work of Dahdouh and other Palestinians journalists documenting the war.

He said “journalists are being targeted and killed for telling the true story” as an Israeli drone hovered overhead during the interview.

Hamza and his colleagues were doing fieldwork, documenting the level of destruction that was caused by an overnight airstrike targeting a residential zone near the road that connects Khan Younis with Rafah.

Reporting from Rafah, Mahmoud said that Hamza and his colleagues had been doing fieldwork, documenting the level of destruction caused by an overnight airstrike targeting a residential zone near the road connecting Khan Younis with Rafah.

“Every airstrike has an aftermath — it does not only cause a great deal of damage to the targeted home but also to the surrounding area,” he said.

“So they were documenting these crimes — destruction, displacement, and people under the rubble — when they were targeted.”

An Al Jazeera news executive compared the war on Gaza and on Palestinians with the Warsaw ghetto during the Second World War, saying “it is genocide”.

Israel aims to “intimidate journalists in a failed attempt to obscure the truth and prevent media coverage”, the Gaza media office said.

It also demanded “the occupation to stop the genocidal war against our defenceless people in the Gaza Strip”.

More than 22,000 people have been killed in Gaza, according to the enclave’s Health Ministry, 40 percent of them children.

Al Jazeera journalist, Wael Dahdouh, bidding farewell to his son Hamza, who has been killed along with journalist Mustafa Thurayya in an Israeli strike, which targeted a journalists’ car. pic.twitter.com/2h0zEizoKo

— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) January 7, 2024

Murder charges have been reinstated against the man suspected of killing French Polynesian journalist Jean-Pascal Couraud, known as “JPK” — his byline, who vanished in 1997.

Francis Stein, a former head of the territory’s archive service, was first charged in 2019 but France’s highest court accepted his appeal last year that investigative magistrates had breached rules during his questioning.

The investigative magistrates have now revived their probe against Stein and Miri Tatarata, who was JPK’s partner.

• READ MORE: Missing – Jean-Pascal Couraud, last seen in French Polynesia
• Other JPK reports

The pair are both accused of killing JPK, an investigative journalist who was editor-in-chief of the French-language newspaper Les Nouvelles de Tahiti, whose body has never been found.

An investigation was first opened in 2004 after a former spy claimed that JPK had been abducted and killed by the government’s GIP militia, which allegedly dumped him at sea between Moorea and Tahiti.

Murder charges against two members of the now disbanded GIP were dismissed eight years ago, but kidnapping charges have been upheld.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Pacific Media Watch newsdesk

An investigation by Al Jazeera has obtained an image of the bullet used to kill the network’s journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, reports Al Jazeera staff.

The photograph for the first time shows the type of ammunition used to kill the veteran Al Jazeera correspondent in the occupied West Bank last month.

According to ballistic and forensic experts, the green-tipped bullet was designed to pierce armour and is used in an M4 rifle. The round was extracted from her head.

• READ MORE: Other reports on the assassination of Shireen Abu Akleh

The bullet was analysed using 3D models and, according to experts, it was 5.56mm calibre – the same as used by Israeli forces. The round was designed and manufactured in the United States, experts said.

In this undated photo, Shireen Abu Akleh stands next to a TV camera above the Old City of Jerusalem [Al Jazeera Media Network]

Fayez al-Dwairi, a former Jordanian major-general, told Al Jazeera the weapon and round used to kill Abu Akleh are regularly carried by Israeli forces.

“This M4 and this munition is used by the Israeli army. It is available and used by the units. I cannot say the whole unit, or most of the soldiers, but they use it,” al-Dwairi told Al Jazeera.

“When any soldier uses it, he uses it for a definite target — he wants to hunt, he wants to kill … There is no way to use it for another thing.”

Palestinian assistant Multilateral Affairs Minister Ammar Hijazi told Al Jazeera the bullet will remain with the Palestinian government for further investigation.

Abu Akleh, a longtime TV correspondent for Al Jazeera Arabic, was killed last month while covering Israeli army raids in the city of Jenin.

Abu Akleh’s case was sent to the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the investigation was recently handed over to the ICC prosecutor. The status of the case, however, remains unclear.

“We think there is enough evidence with the prosecutor … that proves without reasonable doubt that the crime committed against Shireen Abu Akleh was done by the Israeli occupation and they are the perpetrators of this awful crime and they should be held responsible for it,” said Hijazi.

‘Trigger-happy policies’
Abu Akleh was wearing a press vest and standing with other journalists when she was killed.

Israeli authorities initially said Palestinian fighters were responsible for her death, circulating video of Palestinian men shooting down an alleyway. However, researchers from the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem found the spot where the clip was filmed and proved it was impossible to shoot Abu Akleh from there.

In an interview, Omar Shakir — Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch — said all evidence indicates the kill shot came from an Israeli soldier.

Sherif Mansour, MENA programme coordinator of the Committee to Protect Journalists, told Al Jazeera from Washington, DC, that “the pattern” of killing Palestinian media workers “is well known”.

“We have documented at least 19 journalists who were killed by Israeli fire, some of them in the Gaza wars in vehicles marked as press in 2012 and 2014,” Mansour said.

“Some of them were also killed by Israeli snipers while wearing vests with press signs, away from any threatening situation, two of them in 2018. Clearly, we have a problem here of trigger-happy policies that allows this to continue.”

Shireen Abu Akleh: What happened? Video: Al Jazeera

‘Justice and accountability’
In what appeared to be an unprovoked assault at the Al Jazeera correspondent’s funeral days after she was killed, Israeli officers attacked pallbearers, which almost caused them to drop Abu Akleh’s coffin — an incident broadcast live that caused international outrage.

An Israeli police investigation into the attack concluded no one should be punished, despite finding there had been police misconduct, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported.

Al Jazeera’s Nida Ibrahim, reporting from Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, said for Palestinians their version of events is being “confirmed by so many investigations”, including the latest one by Al Jazeera.

“Palestinians have been saying from day one that they know that the bullet that hit Shireen came from Israeli soldiers. The witnesses, the videos that we’ve seen from Palestinians who were there, show there were no Palestinian fighters around the area where Shireen was in,” Ibrahim said.

“Palestinians are seeking now is justice and accountability.”

‘The root cause’
A dual Palestinian-US national, Abu Akleh was one of Al Jazeera’s first field correspondents, joining the network in 1997.

Ori Givati, a former Israeli soldier now with the advocacy group Breaking the Silence, said the round that was analysed was a “very common bullet”.

“It is the bullet that most [Israeli] soldiers use during their service,” he told Al Jazeera.

“This investigation into Shireen’s killing is extremely important, but we also have to remember these incidents happen on a weekly basis.

“Our country understands that if you really look into these cases it all goes back to the root cause. It is why the system is terrified from actually conducting investigations. I haven’t seen Israel really investigate any incident.”

Al Jazeera emailed Israel’s Foreign Press Department for comment early Friday but did not immediately receive a response.

Pacific Media Watch collaborates with Reporters Without Borders.

COMMENTARY: By Mazin Qumsiyeh

It is so hard for me to write today — too many tears. The US-supported Israeli occupation forces’ crimes continue daily but some days are harder than others.

Shireen Abu Akleh, wearing a blue helmet and vest with “PRESS” written over it has been assassinated by Israeli occupation forces.

All journalists on the scene explained how Israeli snipers simply targeted journalists. The first three bullets were a miss, then a hit on one male journalist (in the back). Then when Shireen shouted that he was hit, she was killed with a bullet beneath the ear.

• READ MORE: Latest Abu Akleh killing updates: Palestine rejects Israeli probe
• Shireen Abu Akleh: Al Jazeera reporter killed by Israeli gunfire
• Palestinians in besieged Gaza Strip mourn Abu Akleh’s killing

Shireen was also a US citizen (she was a Bethlehemite Christian who lived in Jerusalem). But that is no protection.

Rachel Corrie was run over by an Israeli military bulldozer and killed intentionally in Rafah two decades ago and the killers were rewarded. Both killings happened as the world was distracted by other conflicts (Iraq and now Ukraine).

The US government cares nothing about its own citizens because politicians are under the thumb of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Thousands of others were killed and the murderers still roam free and are funded by US taxpayers.

War crimes and crimes against humanity continue daily here. The US government is a partner in crime (just note how the US Ambassador simply hoped for an investigation — why not send the FBI to investigate the murder of countless US citizens). The events and the reaction in Western corporate (“mainstream”) media and Western governments makes us so mad.

Same day murder of teenager
If you are not outraged to act, you are not human. In the same day today the apartheid forces murdered 15-year-old Thaer Alyazouri as he was returning from school.

As we pointed out before, Palestine remains the fulcrum and the litmus test and it exposes hypocrisy and collusion.

It is actually the achilles heel for Western propaganda. Like with South Africa under apartheid, Western leaders’ empty rhetoric of human rights and democracy is exposed by their direct support for apartheid and murder.

May this intentional murder of a journalist finally be the straw that breaks the back of hypocrisy, Zionism and imperialism.

Millions of people mourn this brave journalist murdered by a fascist racist regime. Millions will rededicate themselves to challenge Western hypocrisy and US-supported Israeli crimes against humanity.

The Nakba atrocities
My 90-year-old mother born before the Nakba told me about the atrocities done since 1948 and before by the terrorist Zionist militias in their quest to colonise Palestine. From the first terrorist attack (and yes, Zionists were first to use terrorism like bombing markets or hijacking airplanes) to the 33 massacres during the 1948-1950 ethnic cleansing of Palestine (Tantura, Deir Yassin etc).

We will not forget nor forgive. Justice is key to peace here and justice begins with ending the nightmare called Zionism and prosecuting its leaders and collaborators and funders in real fair trials.

Only then will Jews, Christians, Muslims, and all others flourish in this land of Palestine. Palestine will then retun to be a multiethnic, multicultural, and multireligious society instead of a racist apartheid state of Israel.

It is inevitable but we can accelerate it with our actions.

We honour Shireen, Rachel and more than 110,000 martyrs by acting as they did: telling truth, challenging evil deeds, working for justice (which is a prerequisite for peace).

Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh teaches and does research at Bethlehem and Birzeit Universities. He previously served on the faculties of the University of Tennessee, Duke, and Yale Universities. He and his wife returned to Palestine in 2008, starting a number of institutions and projects such as a clinical genetics laboratory that serves cancer and other patients. Qumsiyeh has been harassed and arrested for non-violent actions but also received a number of awards for these same actions.

Veteran Al Jazeera journalist killed by Israeli forces: Live news https://t.co/5B5gkk1MKI

— El_Grillo (@El_Grillo1) May 11, 2022

Philippines tabloid editor Gwenn Salamida has been shot dead by a robber in her recently opened salon in Quezon City.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and its affiliate the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) have called for a rapid investigation into this murder to assure justice for Salamida and her family.

The shooting took place at Salamida’s salon in Barangay Apolonio Samson about 3:35pm on August 17. Salamida was shot after the killer barged inside, declaring a heist, and shot the victims when Salamida resisted.

Salamida was a former editor of Remate Online and had been working recently for another tabloid, Saksi Ngayon.

The Presidential Task Force on Media Security (PTFoMS) asked the authorities to investigate the murder of Salamida.

PTFoMS Executive Director, Undersecretary Joel Sy Egco, said on August 18 that while the motive may not be related to Salamida’s past career in journalism, justice must be served for the sake of Salamida’s family and the community.

Messages by NUJP, IFJ
The NUJP said: “The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines [send] condolences with the family and colleagues of Gwenn Salamida of Saksi Ngayon …

“We join the National Press Club in condemning her murder and in calling for a swift resolution to the case and for justice for her murder.”

The IFJ said: “The death of Gwenn Salamida has been a great loss to the media community of the Philippines.

“We call on the government of the Philippines to rapidly investigate her murder and to ensure that justice is done. The media must be given a safe environment to work in within the Philippines, the murder of journalists must be stopped.”

• Journalists are frequently killed in the Philippines. The Reporters Without Borders 2021 global media freedom index ranks Philippines 138th out of 180 countries.

The Journalism Research and Education Association of Australia (JERAA) has urged the Australian government to make a strong commitment to supporting journalists and media personnel in Afghanistan following the withdrawal of international forces.

JERAA said in a statement today it had endorsed the calls of Australia’s Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) and International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) for urgent action to provide humanitarian visas and other support to those attempting to flee the country.

In the current upheaval, it is difficult to obtain figures on how many journalists have been attacked, but the Afghan Independent Journalist Association and Afghanistan’s National Journalists Union express grave concerns for the well-being of journalists and media personnel.

• READ MORE: RSF visits Afghanistan, proposes “urgent actions” to protect its journalists
• Taliban says it will respect women’s rights, press feedom- Al Jazeera

Nai, an Afghan organisation supporting independent media, released figures indicating that by late July, at least 30 media workers had been killed, wounded or tortured in Afghanistan since the beginning of 2021.

UNESCO has recorded five deaths of journalists in Afghanistan in 2021, making it the country with the world’s greatest number of journalists’ deaths this year. Four have been women, reflecting the higher risk of attacks on female journalists.

Current figures are likely to be incomplete due to the challenges of obtaining information. They do not include deaths of professionals in related industries, such as the murder of the Head of Afghan government Media and Information Centre on August 6.

The Taliban has a long-established pattern of striking out against journalists.

A Human Rights Watch report, released in April 2021, in the lead up to the United States and NATO troop withdrawal, noted that Taliban forces had already established a practice of targeting journalists and other media workers.

Journalists are intimidated, harassed and attacked routinely by the Taliban, which regularly accuses them of being aligned with the Afghan government or international military forces or being spies.

Female journalists face a higher level of threats, especially if they have appeared on television and radio.

International Press Institute figures, released in May 2021 at the start of the troop withdrawals, also showed that Afghanistan had the highest rate of deaths of journalists in the world.

The IPI expressed concern about an intensification of attacks on journalists and the future of the news media in Afghanistan.

Philippine authorities should independently investigate the circumstances surrounding the killing of journalist Ronnie Villamor and hold those responsible to account, says the Committee to Protect Journalists.

In the afternoon of November 14, Philippine Army soldiers shot and killed Villamor, a contributor to the local independent Dos Kantos Balita weekly tabloid, outside a military checkpoint in Milagros, a town in Masbate province in the central Philippines.

He was on his way to cover a disputed land survey, according to press reports.

• READ MORE: Gunmen shoot dead Philippines radio journalist outside his home

The troops, led by Second Lieutenant Maydim Jomadil, were investigating reports of armed men in the area, according to local broadcaster ABS-CBN.

Major Aldrin Rosales, the local police chief, alleged that the troops ordered Villamor to stop his motorcycle, and opened fire when the journalist drew a firearm, according to that report.

In a statement posted to Facebook, the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines denied that version of events, saying that soldiers stopped Villamor and four surveyors he was accompanying despite the group having coordinated with police to be in the area.

When the five decided to call local police to assist them in passing through the army checkpoint, the soldiers opened fire and killed Villamor, the statement said.

‘Swift, independent investigation’ needed
“Authorities must conduct a swift and independent investigation into the killing of journalist Ronnie Villamor, and ensure that any soldiers who acted unlawfully are brought to justice,” said Shawn Crispin, CPJ’s senior Southeast Asia representative.

“Soldiers cannot simply gun down a journalist without fear that their actions will be thoroughly investigated and any wrongdoing punished. Prosecution of the perpetrators is the only way the cycle of impunity will be broken in the Philippines.”

Local English-language outlet Butalat reported that the army and police claimed Villamor was a member of the New People’s Army (NPA), an anti-government armed insurgent group active in the region.

The Presidential Task Force on Media Security, a government body tasked with resolving journalist killings, did not reply to CPJ’s repeated emailed requests for its assessment of Villamor’s killing and information on the status of any investigations into the case.

Villamor covered land disputes and other political issues for Dos Kantos Balita, according to the NUJP. The tabloid covers many hard-hitting issues, including illegal logging, drug trafficking, and illegal fishing in the region, according to a CPJ review of the publication’s Facebook page.

The Philippine Army did not immediately respond to CPJ’s emailed request for comment on the circumstances surrounding Villamor’s killing.

In October, CPJ published its annual Global Impunity Index, a ranking of nations where journalists are slain and their killers go free – the Philippines ranked seventh, with at least 11 unsolved journalist killings.

A radio journalist has been shot dead outside his home by two gunmen on a motorcycle, Philippines police said – four years after the provincial broadcaster survived a similar attempt to kill him.

Virgilio Maganes, 62, who lived northwest of Manila in the province of Pangasinan, was shot six times yesterday and died at the scene, police said, reports Al Jazeera.

Maganes is the 18th journalist to have been killed since President Rodrigo Duterte took office in 2016, and the 190th since Ferdinand Marcos was overthrown in 1986, according to the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP).

• READ MORE: Philippines media freedom – more fear of warlords, corruption

Few of the perpetrators are ever brought to justice.

Maganes survived the previous attempt on his life by pretending to be dead.

“We demand that authorities work fast to solve his death, which could be related to the botched attempt on his life on November 8, 2016, when motorcycle-riding gunmen fired at him as he rode a tricycle,” the NUJP said.

On that occasion, the gunmen left a note at the scene saying: “I’m a drug pusher, don’t emulate me.”

Such messages were common in extrajudicial killings during the height of Duterte’s war on drugs that led to thousands of deaths.

Police said they had not established a motive for the attack on Maganes. At least two other journalists have been killed for doing their work in 2020, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), and both cases remain unsolved.

Reporters Without Borders said in a Tweet it was “terrible news” and called for an independent investigation to “find the culprits of this gruesome murder”.

Terrible news! In the #Philippines, radio journalist Virgilio Maganes was shot six times this morning in front of his house in Pangasinan (North). He was killed immediately. @RSF_inter calls for an independent investigation to find the culprits of this gruesome murder. @nujp pic.twitter.com/ASHkZFKnt8

— RSF (@RSF_inter) November 10, 2020

The Presidential Task Force on Media Security, which was set up to tackle media murders, described the killing as “an act of cowardice” and vowed to hunt down those responsible, while Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra said both Maganes’s murder and the 2016 attack would be investigated to establish whether they were linked to his work as a journalist.

Media under pressure
The Philippines is one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a journalist and the media has found itself under increasing pressure since Duterte was elected president.

ABS-CBN, the country’s largest broadcaster, was ordered to close after the regulator failed to renew the channel’s 25-year operating licence while veteran editor Maria Ressa and her online news site Rappler, are facing numerous court cases on charges ranging from tax evasion to defamation.

Both ABS-CBN and Rappler have been critical of Duterte’s drug war and his government’s policies.

The country’s largest newspaper, the Philippine Daily Inquirer, which has also published stories critical of the drug war, was pressured to be sold to Ramon Ang, an ally of the president, after Duterte threatened its owners with legal consequences.

The newspaper also reported on Duterte’s alleged hidden wealth in the run-up to the 2016 election.

The Duterte administration denies targeting media for its reporting.

Index on Censorship, which campaigns for freedom of expression, condemned Maganes’s killing.

“Press freedom has nosedived under Duterte who heads a constant campaign of harassment,” the organisation said on Twitter. “The world must come together in rage against these awful attacks.”

Today, October 16, marks the 45th anniversary of the Balibo Five – the five Australian-based Australian, British and New Zealand – journalists murdered in East Timor in 1975. Their case remains unsolved.

Roger East, a former ABC journalist, was later murdered when in Timor-Leste investigating the earlier killings and running a Timorese news agency.

This was a marked moment in press freedom history in Australia, yet after investigations were launched to find those responsible and prosecute them, after 1868 days – according to the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) – the AFP (Australian Federal Police) had not made one attempt to question the suspect identified by a prior inquest.

• READ MORE: The betrayal of the Balibo Five
• Other stories on the Balibo Five

The investigation was subsequently dropped.

Since then, nine other Australian journalists have also been murdered, again with complete impunity, reports the Brisbane-based Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom (AJF).

Globally, impunity in cases of journalist murders remains at almost 90 percent.

Professor Peter Greste, director and spokesperson of the AJF, said:

“This trajectory shows a broad and continuing failure of our judicial process, and a lack of political will to address one of the most egregious attacks on the media in our history.

“A liberal democracy stands on the shoulders of a sound legal system, a free press, transparent governance and security forces that protect both the people and the integrity of the system itself.

“Failure to hold those responsible for the Balibo Five murders and those subsequent to them is a failure of our democracy. If we hope to be a strong and flourishing country in the region in future, we must ensure this never happens again.”

Murdered were the three-man Channel Seven crew reporter Greg Shackleton, (29), New Zealand cameraman Gary Cunningham, 27; and 21-year-old sound recorder Tony Stewart; and the two-man Channel Nine crew Scottish-born reporter Malcolm Rennie, 28, and British cameraman Brian Peters.

Roger East opened a one-man news agency in Timor-Leste, stringing for both ABC Radio in Darwin and the AAP news agency in Sydney.

He filed reports on East Timor’s calls for international support and provided the first accounts of the killing of the five journalists at Balibo.

As the sole remaining foreign reporter in East Timor his stories described the approaching Indonesian forces and the plight of the civilian population.

Roger East’s final story for ABC Radio was heard on Correspondents Report on the afternoon of 7 December 1975.

The AJF promotes press freedom and the right of journalists to report the news in freedom and safety. This includes working with Australian governments to ensure legislation supports press freedom. Professor Peter Greste is a director of the AJF and is UNESCO chair in journalism and communication at the University of Queensland (UQ).

In its new report, Safety of Journalists Covering Protests – Preserving Freedom of the Press During Times of Civil Unrest, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural agency (UNESCO) says that between January and June this year, journalists have been increasingly attacked, arrested and even killed.

Launching the report, UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay underscored that the freedom to inform citizens on the causes of unrest and the response from state authorities, are of vital importance for democracies to thrive.

“Journalists have a critical role in reporting and informing audiences on protest movements”, she said.

READ MORE: The UNESCO Safety of Journalists Covering Protests report

UNESCO’s findings reveal a “wider upward trend” in the use of unlawful force by police and security forces over the last five years, with more than 30 protests impeded by police and security forces last year alone – double the 2015 number.

The report finds that during this period, global protests have been rooted in concerns over economic injustice, government corruption, declining political freedoms and growing authoritarianism.

It details a wide range of abuses journalists face when covering protests, from harassment, intimidation and beatings, to being shot at with lethal or non-lethal ammunition, detention and abduction.

‘Much greater efforts’ needed
Citing the Committee for the Protection of Journalists, UNESCO said that in some protests, up to 500 separate violations occurred. During demonstrations linked to the Black Lives Matter movement for greater racial justice, these included the use of rubber bullets and pepper balls, which led to the blinding of several journalists.

Azoulay pointed out that “for many years, UNESCO has been raising global awareness” to ensure that journalists can do their jobs, “without fear of persecution” and has continued to train “security forces and the judiciary on international norms in freedom of expression”.

However, the UNESCO chief warned the figures in the report “show that much greater efforts are needed”.

Ensuring better protection
The report also contains concrete recommendations for all actors – from media outlets and national authorities to international organisations – to ensure better protections for journalists.

Strengthening training for police and law enforcement on freedom of expression and appropriate behaviour in dealing with the media, is just one of the proposals outlined in the Safety of Journalists.

Others include providing appropriate training and equipment to journalists, including freelancers, sent to cover demonstrations as well as appointing national ombudsmen to hold police accountable for the use of force against journalists during demonstrations.

UNESCO provides technical assistance to member states, including training for police and security forces on upholding press freedom and freedom of expression.

“We call on the international community and all relevant authorities to ensure that these fundamental rights are upheld”, the UNESCO chief stated.

Key trends identified by UNESCO since 2015:

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has urged the Philippine authorities to appoint a special independent team to investigate yesterday’s “shocking murder” of an investigative radio journalist with a reputation for covering corruption.

He was gunned down by two men on a motorcycle in Dumaguete City, the capital of the central province of Negros Oriental, reports RSF.

Cornelio Pepino, known to his listeners as Rex Cornelio, was shot five times at close range at around 8.30 pm as he was driving home after presenting his programme Pokpokin Mo Baby! (Hit it baby!) on dyMD Energy FM 93.7. He died on the spot.

READ MORE: Top Philippines TV network told to close under Duterte pressure

Lieutenant Allen June Germondo, the police office in charge of the investigation, said he was examining the hypothesis that Pepino was killed in connection with his journalism.

As well as being a well-known radio show host, Pepino had a solid reputation as an investigative reporter in Negros Oriental.

He had exposed several cases of corruption, bribery and illegal mining. Negros Oriental governor Roel Degamo sued him for defamation in 2014, but he was finally acquitted in 2017.

“There is every reason to suspect that Cornelio Pepino was deliberately silenced because people were annoyed by his journalism,” said Daniel Bastard, the head of RSF’s Asia-Pacific desk.

“We urge the Presidential Task Force on Media Security to take charge of the investigation and to appoint an independent team to carry it out. The vicious cycle of crimes of violence against journalists and impunity must stop.”

16 journalists slain
Two other radio journalists have been gunned down in a similar manner by hitmen on motorcycles in the past two years in Dumaguete City. One was Dindo Generoso, a radio commentator who criticised a popular local form of gambling and the associated corruption.
He was shot eight times last November.

The other was Edmund Sestoso, who was shot in May 2018. He was well known for explaining local political conflicts in Negros Oriental.

The current Philippine administration boasts of having created a Presidential Task Force on Media Security as soon as Rodrigo Duterte became president in 2016. Nonetheless, if confirmed, Pepino will be the 16th journalist to have been killed in connection with their work since then.

Pepino was slain on the same day that the National Telecommunications Commission ordered the country’s biggest TV and radio network, ABS-CBN, to stop operating with immediate effect.

ABS-CBN’s TV channels and radio stations did indeed stop broadcasting yesterday evening.

The Philippines is ranked 136th out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2020 World Press Freedom Index, two places lower than in 2019.

The Australian lawyer who helped uncover the Timor-Leste bugging scandal says Australia had direct, advanced knowledge of the threat that faced the murdered Balibo Five journalists, with a report describing the men as a “hurdle to be got over” in keeping clandestine activities secret.

Bernard Collaery has published what he describes as a “a survey of failed Australian policy” towards its much smaller neighbour. In Oil Under Troubled Water, he describes seven decades of “grim” history, including the Indonesian occupation years he pointedly labels “genocide”.

“I’ve not called it a holocaust, I wouldn’t use that term… [but] when there is a reckless starvation of people, it is close to, and [it] is genocide,” he told Tatoli.

The release of the book comes as Collaery and the former Australian Special Intelligence Service (ASIS) officer known as Witness K face criminal prosecution for their role in exposing the bugging of Timor-Leste’s cabinet rooms during sensitive oil and gas treaty negotiations in 2004.

The claims about Australia’s high-level knowledge of the impending Balibo attack come in a report which Collaery uncovered in the UK National Archives, where he spent some time researching the book. It highlights the information-sharing between Australia and Indonesia’s intelligence agency, then known as Bakin, in the lead up to the December 1975 invasion.

In his report, Britain’s then-Ambassador to Indonesia, John Ford, writes “the only limitation on clandestine activity now appears to be of its exposure”.

“A particular hurdle to be got over is a plane load of Australian journalists and politicians who are due to visit Timor… to investigate allegations of Indonesian intervention,” Ford writes. “The information from the Australians is sensitive and should not be played back to them or repeated to other missions.”

For Collaery, who advised the East Timor resistance for more than 30 years and has represented the families of the murdered Balibo Five, this was a “shocking” candour.

“[The Whitlam government] could hardly warn the Australians… that Indonesian special forces were a danger to them without conceding that they were aware that clandestine activities were happening inside Portuguese Timor,” he writes.

“So, rather than save lives, they saved the relationship with the Indonesian intelligence service, clearly.”

The report undermines the official version of events leading up to the Balibo attack. A 2002 Parliamentary report found another intelligence agency, the Defence Signals Directorate, did not have “intelligence material that could have alerted the government to the possibility of harm to the newsmen” and that “there was no holding back or suppression of data”.

‘We will not press you on the issue’: Kissinger
Collaery also quotes a US State Department transcript of a meeting between Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Indonesian General Suharto on December 6, 1975 he said betrays a “profound breach” of the United Nations charter.

“We want your understanding if we deem it necessary to take rapid or drastic action [in Timor],” General Suharto said.

“We will understand and will not press you on the issue. We understand the problem you have and the intentions you have,” Secretary Kissinger replied.

The day after the conversation, Indonesia invaded Dili and began its 24-year occupation of Timor-Leste.

Collaery says the conversation is evidence Indonesia acted with “unprovoked aggression“.

“[And] it’s a breach of the code by the United States as an accessory to that series of war crimes,” he says. Australia, as “a more silent witness”, was also complicit, he adds.

‘It’s ruined my law practice… they would have known that’
The book carefully skirts around the criminal proceedings Collaery faces for legal reasons.

“It’s not a memoir,” he says. “That comes later”.

A well-known Canberra barrister, former ACT Attorney-General and diplomat, Collaery took the former ASIS agent Witness K on as a client in 2013. After learning of the bugging operation, Collaery had arranged for his client to give evidence at a confidential overseas hearing.

But after news of the bugging operation was reported in the Australian media, the country’s domestic spy agency, ASIO, raided the lawyer’s home, seizing documents and data. ASIO also raided the home of his client, and had his passport cancelled, preventing Witness K from attending the hearing.

In protest, Timor-Leste unilaterally withdrew from the 2004 CMATS Treaty and took the case to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, with Collaery representing them. The case was subsequently withdrawn, and the two countries resolved the dispute through mandatory conciliation in early 2018.

Months after the treaty was signed, Collaery and Witness K were charged under the Intelligence Services Act of 2001. The Act criminalises the unauthorised disclosure of certain information about ASIS, Australia’s foreign spy agency.

Collaery is frank about how the prolonged case has affected his life.

“It’s ruined my law practice… I live on borrowed money, I can’t practice as an advocate in court, I’ve had to let my staff go. That’s all predictable and [prosecutors] would have known that,” he says.

Serious legal risks
Celestino Gusmão from L’ao Hamutuk, a Dili-based human rights organisation, has extensively researched the long-running maritime border dispute. He says Timor-Leste has shown great support to Collaery and Witness K.

“Through their love, their solidarity with the Timorese people, they put the people of Timor ahead [of their own lives],” he says.

Gusmão says he appreciates the serious legal risks the pair ran in exposing the bugging operation.

“I think Bernard Collaery and Witness K [were] prepared for this, but [they] should not be used as a deterrent,” he says.

• Bernard Collaery (2020). Oil Under Troubled Water, Melbourne University Press. This news review was first published in Tatoli, the Timor-Leste News Agency website.

For decades, the feared Ampatuan clan held sway in the impoverished province of Maguindanao in Mindanao in the southern Philippines. Through a ruthless private army and a reported “propensity for beheadings”, the clan cultivated a culture of impunity. Now, however, reports David Robie, a courageous judge has challenged the horror by jailing the masterminds of the 2009 Ampatuan massacre for life.

SPECIAL REPORT: By David Robie in Manila

The families of the 58 victims – 32 of them journalists or media workers – had waited for 10 years for justice in the Philippines.

After so long, what is another couple of hours?

The Ampatuan massacre in Maguindanao on 22 November 2009 was the world’s worst single attack on journalists and the worst elections-related violence in a country notorious for electoral mayhem.

READ MORE: The Ampatuan massacre – what happened and why

With the judge almost two hours late in arriving at the fortified special courtroom in Camp Bagong Diwa, a police barracks with a jail annex in Manila’s satellite Taguig City, fears were expressed for her safety.

The 101 accused (although three were missing and cited for possible contempt of court) for the heinous crime, dressed in yellow jail tees, were housed in in a barred cage sandwiched between lawyers and some 200 heavily armed police guards and waiting.

The lawyers for both prosecution and defence were waiting.

The media crews for the CNN Philippines live broadcast anchored by celebrity Pinky Webb were waiting.

The CNN Philippines live newsfeed on the Ampatuan judgment.

Live television
The public, glued to their television sets or live streaming from CNN and the state-run People’s Television, were waiting.

In the end, the historic judgment took only 52 minutes.

Many of the victims’ families burst into spontaneous applause for the jailing of the ringleaders; others wept for joy with the convictions. While other families of some of the accused were relieved with the acquittals.

Judge Joycelyn Solis-Reyes of the Quezon Trial Court Branch 221 announced to the court that she could deliver the shortened verdict rather than the full 761-page judgement or “it could take all day”.

In fact, broadcaster Peter Musngi reckoned it would have taken “43 uninterrupted days” to read the full judgement. Both prosecution and defence lawyers agreed to the short reading with the full judgment being made available online – read it here on Rappler.

Judge Solis-Reyes sentenced the 28 principal accused – including three brothers of the powerful Ampatuan warlord clan from Mindanao – to life in prison without parole and ordered them to pay a total of more than 155 million pesos (almost NZ$5 million) in changes to the heirs of 57 victims killed in the massacre.

The judge reduced the “official” death toll from 58 to 57 because the body of photojournalist Reynaldo Momay was never found. This means that the Momay family was not granted compensation even though it was commonly known that he was with the journalists who were killed and never been seen since. There was also dental evidence linking him found at the multiple murder scene.

Appealing sentences
Some of those jailed announced last week that they are appealing against their sentences, and the prosecution is also appealing over the acquittals and the judge’s Momay finding.

While it has been a long wait for justice for the victims, it had also been a long wait for the judge herself. Judge Solis-Reyes had shelved her own plans for career advancement so that she could see the notorious case through to judgment.

She was forced to brave death threats and political pressure over the case. At least three witnesses were killed during the course of the trial.

The judge had earlier admitted in interviews that she had wanted to pursue a career in broadcast media and had studied journalism at the Lyceum of the Philippines.

Describing the atmosphere in the courtroom with 400 people packed in to hear the verdict of the century” on December 19, Tempo columnist Jullie Y. Daza wrote that the judge “deserves the nation’s gratitude for her dedication and deportment”.

“All I can say is,” she added, “you’re priceless, Your Honour.”

Judge Solis-Reyes broke down her summary into 1. Those guilty beyond reasonable doubt; 2. Accessories; 3. Those released on the basis of reasonable doubt; 4. Those facing arrest warrants.

Police officers acquitted
Forty-three people, including leaders of the Ampatuan clan, were convicted of mass murder or being accessories, and 58 other accused – many of them police officers – were acquitted in the infamous case.

Sentenced to reclusion perpetua, or up to 40 years in prison without parole – effectively life – on 57 counts of murder were prominent clan members Datu Andal “Unsay” Ampatuan Jr; his brothers, former Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) governor Datu Zaldy “Puti” Ampatuan Sr, and Anwar Ampatuan Sr, former mayor of Shariff Aguak town.

Another brother was acquitted. Two other prominent members of the clan – nephews Anwar Ampatuan Jr and Anwar Sajid Ampatuan – and 23 others were also found guilty of the multiple murders.

Fifteen other accused – almost all of them policemen – were convicted as accessories to murder and sentenced to between six and 10 years in prison.

It took 10 years, 424 trial days, to hear the testimonies of 357 witnesses against 197 who were originally charged.

During the long-running trial, six accused were acquitted and the clan patriarch, Andal Ampatuan Sr, also accused, died in prison from a sudden heart attack in 2015, aged 74.

One of his daughters, Rebecca, told the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) that her father had six wives and 40 children. The PCIJ closely followed the case for a decade with a series of special reports in The Maguindanao Chronicles.

The killings in 2009 sent shockwaves around the world because of the brazenness of the attack. The victims, including 20 women, were kidnapped and clubbed before they were executed, mutilated and buried in shallow graves.

Mass graves
The backhoe digger, using a government machine, who excavated and filled the mass graves, was among the convicted accessories.

The ambushed electoral convoy had been taking the registration papers to enable challenger Esmael “Toto” Mangudadatu to contest the governorship of Maguindanao in defiance of threats by the Ampatuans. He was not with the convoy, but his wife, Genalyn, was shot 17 times: “They shot her on her breasts, her private parts. Such unimaginable cruelty.”

He subsequently won the election in a landslide in 2010 and has since been elected to the Philippine national Congress.

The mass murders were widely condemned around the world by governments, global media freedom organisations and human rights groups. The US ambassador at the time, Kristie Kenney, described the killings as “barbaric” and then UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned the brutal political violence in the southern Philippines.

The Malacañang presidential palace welcomed the convictions last month, saying the rule of law had prevailed in closing one of the darkest chapters of Philippine history.

“The Maguindanao massacre marks a dark chapter in recent Philippine history that represents merciless disregard for the sacredness of human life, as well as the violent suppression of press freedom,” said presidential spokesman Salvador Panelo, who ironically was once one of the lawyers for the Ampatuans.

“This savage affront to human rights should never have duplication in this country’s history.”

Editorial opinions cautious
However, most editorial opinion in the nation’s media and human rights groups greeted the “historic” judgment with caution.

“Justice at last, but …” summed up the headline on a Philippine Star editorial, warning “a victory has been achieved, but the pursuit of justice is far from over”. Said the Star:

“Amid the rejoicing are the disappointments and concerns about what might happen next. With 56 defendants cleared, including two members of the Ampatuan clan, there are valid concerns raised by the victims’ families that violence remains a serious threat in the clan’s turf.

“Most of the guns believed owned by the Ampatuans and their private army remain unaccounted for. The claim is believed to continue enjoying control over substantial funds and other assets.

“Harassment of witnesses, victims’ relatives and prosecution lawyers are possible. At least three witnesses were killed in the course of the trial.

“There are 80 suspects still to be brought to justice, and an appeals process that could take another decade to complete. There is the equally complicated task of going after the assets of the Ampatuan clan.

“There are other criminal cases – about 200 of them – still being pursued, including complaints for corruption and obstruction of justice, as well as cases related to the murders and disappearances of witnesses.”

‘Terrible crime’
The Philippine Daily Inquirer noted in an editorial that this daily newspaper – along with other media – had “faithfully reported on the terrible crime that thrust the Philippines squarely on the map for the single deadliest attack on journalists in the world.

“In bearing witness, we strived mightily to ‘piece together the bloody shards of the crime’, and to find the words to ‘approximate the horror’.

But the Inquirer added that there were significant lessons to be learned – and acted upon – in spite of the hope stirred by Judge Solis-Reyes’ guilty verdicts, such as the “endless delay” caused by defence motions that reflected the “dismaying state of the judicial system”.

“And journalists and media workers remain in peril in the fast-shrinking democratic space.”

Philippine Star columnist Ana Marie Pamintuan described the Ampatuan clan as “Monsters Inc.” and was candid in a wide-ranging article about the challenges ahead after the judgment.

One challenge is to “catch the 80 suspects who remain at large and bring them to justice”. Another is the expected “spirited fight for their acquittal” on appeal for those who were convicted.

“Let’s hope the road to final judgment won’t take another 10 years,” warned Pamintuan.

Another huge challenge is the legal fight to have the Ampatuans’ massive wealth forfeited by the state, and payment of civil damages to the victims’ families.

Property freeze orders
Freeze orders have been issues by the courts on bank accounts, real estate property and other identified assets of the Ampatuan clan.

“Prosecutors believe, however, that substantial amounts of cash have been stashed away by the clan the old fashioned way – not in banks where there is a paper trail, but perhaps in boxes, chests or baul [a Tagalog word meaning a traditional clothes trunk], buried somewhere or concealed within walls the way South American narcos do with their mountains of dirty money,” says Pamintuan.

“In one of the poorest regions in the country, the Ampatuans thrived, driving around in convoys of luxury vehicles with their private armies, living it up in fortified mansions. How do local executives in third-class municipalities and impoverished provinces, with their modest salaries, manage to accumulate that kind of wealth?”

The last challenge – and probably the toughest – is how to “eliminate the environment that creates monsters and breeds impunity”?

Etta Rosales, former chair of the Philippine Commission on Human Rights, described the Mindanao environment as like the “wild, wild west”, warning it remained “compromised injustice” until the private armies and political dynasties were rooted out.

While the Ampatuan massacre remains the worst example of this environment, there are many other regions of the Philippines where the local population are ruled by patronage and fear.

The implications for press freedom in the Philippines have not been lost on students and tertiary journalism schools.

‘Already afraid’
Writing on Rappler, Diwa Donato, a political science graduate from Saint Louis University, Baguio City, who has dedicated 13 years of her life to campus journalism as an advocate for youth empowerment, press freedom and democracy, says she will never forget the day of the massacre. She was aged 10 at the time – and she was “already afraid to continue my dream of pursuing journalism”.

“The Philippines remains one of the deadliest countries for journalists in Southeast Asia,” she says.

“The fight of professional journalism will always be the fight of campus journalism. We celebrate the Ampatuan massacre verdict, hope for justice, and continue to address the struggles of press freedom.

“For now, democracy and press freedom have won. But we do not fight to win, we fight to be free. There is more to be done.”

National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) chair Nonoy Espina also fears for the future.

“The culture of impunity for crimes against journalists means that massacres like the one in Ampatuan can happen again,” he says. “Without justice, the bloodshed will continue.”

The NUJP played a key role in independent investigations and keeping a watch on government, also sponsoring family members of slain journalists to get to Manila for the trial.

Ruthless warlords
The Ampatuans were the warlords of Maguindanao and the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).

“Even Andal Ampatuan Jr’s ruthlessness and sociopathic violence served a purpose,” admits Pamintuan. “Cops and soldiers who were assigned to the ARMM talk of the Islamic separatists being terrified of incurring the ire of Andal Jr because of his reported propensity to decapitate and mutilate anyone who crossed him.”

“There are other political warlords still out there – running their own fiefdoms like gangsters, naming streets and villages and government projects after their family members, freely using public money for private purposes and controlling every aspect of the local criminal justice system.”

Yes, a victory, but the fight to end impunity in the Philippines has just begun.

Professor David Robie, director of the Pacific Media Centre, has been in the Philippines on a research sabbatical.

• The Maguindanao Chronicles: Shamefully rich, clan has 35 houses, fleet of wheels
• National Union of Journalists of the Philippines on the Ampatuan massacre 10 years on – before the judgment
• Children bear the brunt 10 years since the Ampatuan massacre

Café Pacific video of the Ampatuan trial guilty verdicts.

Two Indonesian journalists who had reported on an illegal oil palm plantation in Sumatra have been found stabbed to death.

According to environmental news site Mongabay, the body of Maraden Sianipar was found on October 30 in a ditch in the concession of palm grower PT Sei Alih Berombang (SAB).

The body of Martua Siregar, 42, was found the next day in the bushes nearby.

READ MORE: Toxic smoke chokes region as Indonesian rainforests burn

Both men worked for a weekly publication, Pindo Merdeka, based in Medan, the capital of North Sumatra province.

Witnesses said the journalists had also been involved with a community dispute with the plantation company in which the community was attempting to take control of the oil palm once the local forestry office had ruled that the company’s expansion onto forested land was illegal.

While Mongabay reports that SAB’s concession was sealed off by authorities a year ago after it was found to have cleared 750 hectares of forest to plant oil palms, the plantation still maintained a detail of security guards who were known to violently confront locals seeking to harvest the palm fruit.

Witnesses said that the journalists had gone to the plantation on October 29 with a group of locals to harvest the palm fruit. According to one witness, he had warned Maraden that plantation guards armed with machetes were waiting for them.

Two people have since been arrested in Labuhan Batu in relation to the murders and police are hunting down another four, reports The Jakarta Post.

Labuhan Batu police chief detective Jama Kita Purba said the motive behind the murder was “revenge over a land dispute.”

While it is unclear whether the murders were a direct response to the men’s journalistic work or their activism work with the community, The Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI) and the Indonesian Journalists Association (PWI) have weighed in, condemning the killings and called on authorities to further investigate the case.

In an editorial, The Jakarta Post wrote that: “Indonesia has become an increasingly dangerous place for journalists, and the consequences of this disturbing trend could be dire for the world’s third-largest democracy.”

“Regardless of the results of the investigation, the incident has again rung the alarm bell on the state of press freedom in the country.”

“We can’t afford to let this go on. To quote United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, ‘when journalists are targeted, societies as a whole, pay a price’.”

The murders come a month after another Indonesian activist, Golfrid Siregar was found dead in similar circumstances in Sumatra.

A human rights lawyer an activist for Wahana Lingkungan Hidup Indonesia, or Walhi, Indonesia’s largest environmental group, Siregar was a tireless advocate of communities threatened by oil palm plantations.

He had been engaged in a lawsuit against North Sumatra’s governor over his 2017 approval for the construction of the Batang Toru hydroelectric dam in the only know habitat of Indonesia’s critically endangered Tapanuli orangutan.

A cab driver found Siregar unconscious on a street in Medan and took him to a local hospital where he later died on October 6.

He had suffered multiple injuries and his wallet and other personal effects were missing.

Police ruled Siregar’s death the result of a drunken-driving crash, despite the contradictory nature of the injuries, his undamaged motorbike and testimony from his family that he hadn’t drunk alcohol that evening.

The cab driver and two others have since been arrested for robbing Siregar of his possessions.

Walhi colleagues said that Siregar had received several threats since they had filed the lawsuit against the Batang Toru dam.

According to Andreas Harsono of Human Rights Watch, the death and its investigation should ring alarm bells.

“All those concerned about Indonesia’s environment will be watching the authorities to ensure that a credible investigation occurs and that any crime associated with his death is appropriately prosecuted.”

The statistics globally are chilling. And the Asia-Pacific region bears the brunt of the killing of journalists with impunity disproportionately.

Revelations in research published in the latest edition of Pacific Journalism Review on the trauma experienced by television journalists in the Philippines covering President Rodrigo Duterte’s so-called ‘war on drugs’ are deeply disturbing.

More than 12,000 people have reportedly been killed – according to Amnesty International, although estimates are unverified – in the presidential-inspired purge.

READ MORE: Killing the messenger

According to UNESCO, about 1,010 journalists globally have been “killed for reporting the news and bringing information to the public” in the 12 years until 2017 – or on average, one death every four days.

Many argue that the Philippines, with one of the worst death tolls of journalists in the past decade, is a prime example of the crisis.

Journalists covering the “graveyard shift” were the first recorders of violence and brutality under Duterte’s anti-illegal drugs campaign.

The first phase in 2016, called Oplan Tokhang, was executed ruthlessly and relentlessly.

Chilling study
This chilling post-traumatic stress study in the latest PJR by ABS-CBN news executive Mariquit Almario-Gonzalez examines how graveyard-shift TV journalists experienced covering Oplan Tokhang.

The Tagalog phase in English means “to knock and plead” and was supposed to be bloodless – a far cry from the reality.

Almario-Gonzalez’s colleague, award-winning photographer Fernando G Sepe Jr, has also contributed an associated photoessay drawn from his groundbreaking ‘Healing The Wounds From the Drug War’ gallery.

He reflects on the impact of Duterte’s onslaught on the poor in his country.

Compared to the Philippines and other Asian countries – such as Cambodia, Indonesia and Myanmar – media freedom issues in the Pacific micro states and neighbouring Australia and New Zealand may appear relatively benign – and certainly not life threatening.

Nevertheless, the Pacific faces growing media freedom challenges.

The phosphate Micronesian state of Nauru banned the Australian public broadcaster ABC and “arrested” Television New Zealand Pacific correspondent Barbara Dreaver while she covered the Pacific Islands Forum leaders summit in September 2018.

Media freedom crises
In this context, Auckland University of Technology’s Pacific Media Centre marked its tenth anniversary in November 2017 with a wide-ranging public seminar discussing critical media freedom crises.

The “Journalism Under Duress in Asia-Pacific” seminar examined media freedom and human rights in the Philippines and in Indonesia’s Papua region – known as West Papua.

Keynote speakers included Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) executive director Malou Mangahas and RNZ Pacific senior journalist Johnny Blades.

Papers from this seminar and 14 other contributing researchers from seven countries on topics ranging from the threats to the internet, post-conflict identity, Pacific media freedom and journalist safety are featured in this edition of PJR.

Unthemed paper topics include representations of Muslims in New Zealand, ASEAN development journalism, US militarism in Micronesia and the reporting of illegal rhino poaching for the Vietnamese market.

The issue has been edited by Professor David Robie, director of the PMC, Khairiah A. Rahman of AUT, and Dr Philip Cass of Unitec. The designer was Del Abcede.

• The November edition of Pacific Journalism Review
• Journalism under duress in Asia-Pacific

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has condemned the killing of Philippine radio journalist Joey Llana near Legazpi City, at the southeastern tip of the island of Luzon, and has called on the authorities to do everything possible to find those responsible.

Joey Llana, 38, was gunned down yesterday as he drove to work at Radio DwZR in Legazpi City, where he hosted a morning radio programme, reports the Paris-based global media freedom watchdog RSF.

Local police said he was hit at least 14 times in the head and body by shots fired by five unidentified gunmen.

The police have not yet identified a motive but a relative said Llana had recently received death threats, which suggested that he had been targeted in connection with his work.

President Rodrigo Duterte’s spokesman, Harry Roque, condemned the murder and said it would be investigated by the Presidential Task Force on Media Security.

“We condemn radio journalist Joey Llana’s murder in the strongest terms as it is a serious press freedom violation, and we welcome the decision by the president’s office to open an immediate investigation and its declared desire to render justice to the victim,” a statement from RSF’s Asia-Pacific desk said.

“The Philippines, which is one of the most dangerous countries for journalists in Asia, must do everything possible to effectively combat violence against the media and impunity for this violence.”

Third journalist killed
If the initial suspicions are confirmed, Llana will be the third journalist to have been murdered this year in the Philippines in connection with their work, reports RSF.

Newspaper journalist Dennis Denora was slain in a similar fashion in the southern province of Davao del Norte in June, as was radio show host Edmund Sestoso in the central province of Negros Oriental in May.

At least six other journalists have been killed in connection with their work since Duterte, who is prone to virulent verbal attacks on the media, was elected president in 2016.

The Philippines fell six places in RSF’s 2018 World Press Freedom Index and is now ranked 133rd out of 180 countries.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has called for an independent inquiry into the death in detention of Muhammad Yusuf, a reporter who was being held in South Kalimantan province, in the far south of the Indonesian part of Borneo, on a charge of defaming a local palm oil production company.

A series of irregularities surround Muhammad Yusuf’s death in the town of Kotabaru on June 10, nine weeks after his arrest because of his coverage of allegedly illegal land seizures linked to the activities of MSAM, a company that operates a huge oil palm plantation in the province, reports RSF.

Yusuf had become well-known for his reporting on the story, writing no fewer than 23 articles for two news websites, Kemajuan Rakyat and Berantas News, from November 2017 to March 2018.

He was arrested on April 5 as he was about to fly to Jakarta to meet with the National Commission on Human Rights.

After holding him for more than two months, the police say he was taken from prison to a hospital in Kotabaru on 10 June with chest pains, vomiting and breathing difficulties, and died soon after arrival as a result of a heart attack.

“We call on the Indonesian government and supreme court to guarantee a full and independent investigation and to deploy whatever resources are necessary to ensure that all possible light is shed on this journalist’s death,” said Daniel Bastard, head of RSF’s Asia-Pacific desk.

“The credibility of the rule of law in Indonesia is at stake because of the many doubts surrounding this case.

“What with his critical reporting, the appearance of collusion and a lack of transparency, there are many reasons for suspecting that Muhammad Yusuf died because of his journalistic work.”

Strong suspicions
Yusuf’s wife, Arvaidah, had requested his release three times on medical grounds because of concern about his state of health. After his death, she was denied access to the morgue and to the autopsy results. Convinced that his death was “not natural,” she has filed a complaint against the police and district attorney, who were jointly responsible for detention.

Many people question the independence of the police and district attorney’s office in this matter. South Kalimantan’s governor is the uncle of the wealthy businessman who owns MSAM, the company targeted by Yusuf’s reporting.

According to Tempo, a leading Indonesian news website, bruises on the back of Yusuf’s neck can be seen in a video of his body.

All these suspicions prompted the National Commission on Human Rights to announce last week that it was opening an investigation into his death.

Indonesia is ranked 124th out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2018 World Press Freedom Index.

The Pacific Media Centre is an associate of Reporters Without Borders in media freedom work.

• More Indonesian stories

For journalists who cover Afghanistan, the bombing that killed nine local reporters last week in Kabul was a sober reminder of the dangers the media continue to face in the country’s seemingly endless conflict.

The victims were not well-known foreign correspondents, but a group of courageous Afghan photographers, reporters and cameramen who had gone to report on another bomb blast that had exploded about 40 minutes earlier.

They included a photographer from the French news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP), as well as contributors to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and several local media companies.

READ MORE: Free media week killings underscore crimes of impunity against journalists

Elsewhere on the same day, a 10th journalist was shot dead – a reporter for the BBC’s Pashto service, Ahmad Shah.

According to Reporters Without Borders, it was the deadliest single day for journalists in the country since the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001.

The principal way we receive news from conflict zones like Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq is via eyewitnesses on social media and the global news agencies – AFP, Associated Press and Reuters. Agency reporters are often the first “media responders” to deadly incidents like suicide bombings and terror attacks. They also negotiate with local reporters on the ground to secure the best pictures, which then get relayed to the thousands of media companies around the world who subscribe to their services.

To feed this beast of global 24/7 news coverage, there is still an expectation that agency journalists will dare to tread where others will not.

Journalists as targets
Increasingly, this has become even more dangerous, as extremist groups like the Islamic State have shifted tactics to specifically target journalists.

The Afghan Journalists Safety Committee warned of “an unprecedented increase in threats and violence against journalists” in a 2017 report:

Increased threats from DAESH to media and journalists have created a new wave of concerns about the security of journalists and media. What is seriously worrying is the group’s direct attacks against media, which in 2017 is responsible for the vast majority of journalists’ deaths.

Reporters Without Borders says 34 journalists and media workers have died in attacks by the Islamic State and Taliban in Afghanistan since the start of 2016. The situation has become so dire that the group has called on the United Nations to appoint a special representative dedicated to protecting the lives of journalists. The proposal has been backed by French President Emmanuel Macron and the German Parliament.

Without adequate security provisions, journalists have also been abandoning countries that have become too dangerous, Reporters Without Borders notes in its 2017 annual report on reporters killed in the line of duty.

AFP continues to operate with a team of two or three foreign journalists in Kabul, backed up by seven full-time Afghan journalists and various stringers working across the country. Reuters employs just one foreign correspondent and one local journalist in Kabul, and AP has two local reporters and two local photographers.

Former BBC journalist Bilal Sarwary, who now works as a freelancer, tells me there are very few Western journalists left in Afghanistan because “Iraq and then Syria have commanded their attention” in recent years. He said The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post still have reporters based in the country, but now rely almost entirely on freelance photographers.

Responding to the new reality
Under global news director Michèle Léridon, AFP has been highly innovative at adapting to news gathering challenges, but also strict in its policy of not being made stooges by terrorists. According to Phil Chetwynd, AFP’s global editor-in-chief, the company is constantly evaluating its security procedures.

We have always been cautious about rushing to the scene of attacks. We have moved our office several times in Kabul to find a better location as the threat level has changed. We have sent security experts to review our procedures and to recommend physical reinforcements and measures to our buildings.

We have also sent reporters on hostile environment courses and sent trainers to Kabul to train all staff including non-journalists. The message to all our reporters remains that security comes first.

Chetwynd notes the suicide bomber who killed the nine Afghan journalists in Kabul last week – a group that included AFP photographer Shah Marai – had apparently been posing as a fellow reporter, a new tactic by terror groups.

“We are already changing and reacting to this appalling new reality,” he says.

It’s clear that all media organisations need to constantly rethink their strategies when it comes to reporting in conflict zones.

Media scholars, too, are tackling the issue. At the upcoming International Communications Association conference in Prague later this month, I will be joining other academics on a panel titled “Voices in journalism: Local news staff producing international news” to discuss the latest research examining the working conditions of stringers, fixers and local journalists.

Researched challenges
One of the panellists, Saumava Mitra, has researched the work of photojournalists in Afghanistan and co-authored an essay last week on the challenges they face:

We have seen that local journalists usually have much poorer access to hostile-environment training, work-hazard insurance or even medical benefits from their employers. They face different threats and risks than those who parachute into the conflict and have nowhere to go if the situation escalates.

They are also much more prone to reprisals. The first step to help prevent their deaths is to acknowledge that the news we consume is often produced by journalists working under precarious conditions in hostile places.

Marai, for one, always knew the dangers of working in Kabul, as his blog on the AFP website so devastatingly shows. In it, he recounts how life changed for the worse when the Taliban returned to stage attacks in Kabul in the mid-2000s:

“I don’t dare to take my children for a walk. I have five and they spend their time cooped up inside the house. Every morning as I go to the office and every evening when I return home, all I think of are cars that can be booby-trapped, or of suicide bombers coming out of a crowd. I can’t take the risk. So we don’t go out.

“I have never felt life to have so little prospects and I don’t see a way out. It’s a time of anxiety.”

Dr Colleen Murrell is undergraduate coordinator for journalism at Monash University, Melbourne, and the author of Foreign Correspondents and International Newsgathering: The role of fixers.This article was first published by The Conversation and is republished on Asia Pacific Report under a Creative Commons licence.

• Journalists in war zones tread a fine line between safety and freedom of speech

Pacific Media Watch Newsdesk

Reporters Without Borders has documented the number of journalists killed or jailed this year.

It says Syria and Mexico are among the most dangerous places for reporters to work. Sixty percent of journalists killed are targeted because of their journalistic work.

The Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has released its annual round-up of violence and abuses against journalists throughout the world.

A total of 65 journalists were killed in 2017, 326 are currently in prison, and 54 are held hostage.*

The 65 journalists who were killed were either fatally injured in the course of their work (for example, in an artillery bombardment) or were murdered because their reporting angered someone. The murdered reporters were the majority – 60 percent of the total figure.

Although these figures are alarming, 2017 has been the least deadly year for professional journalists (50 killed) in 14 years. Journalists are of course fleeing countries such as Syria, Yemen and Libya that have become too dangerous, but RSF has also observed a growing awareness of the need to protect journalists.

The UN has passed several resolutions on the safety of journalists since 2006 and many news organisations have adopted safety procedures.

Deaths of women double
The fall does not apply to deaths of women journalists, which have doubled. Ten have been killed in 2017, compared to five in 2016.

Most of these victims were experienced and combative investigative reporters. Despite threats, they continued to investigate and expose cases of corruption.

The victims include Daphne Caruana Galizia in Malta, Gauri Lankesh in India and Miroslava Breach Velducea in Mexico.

In another noteworthy trend in 2017, some countries that are not at war have become almost as dangerous for journalists as war zones: 46 percent of the deaths occurred in countries where no overt war is taking place, as against 30 percent in 2016.

There were almost as many deaths (11) in Mexico as in Syria, which was the deadliest country for journalists in 2017, with 12 killed.

“Investigative journalists working on major stories such as corruption and environmental scandals play a fundamental watchdog role and have become targets for those who are angered by their reporting,” RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire said.

‘Alarming situation’
“This alarming situation underlines the need to provide journalists with more protection at a time when both the challenges of news reporting and the dangers are becoming increasingly internationalised.”

Like the death toll, the number of journalists in detention has also fallen. The total of 326 journalists in prison on December 1, 2017 was 6 percent fewer than on the same date in 2016.

Despite the overall downward trend, there is an unusually high number of detained journalists in certain countries, in particular Russia and Morocco, that did not previously number among the worst jailers of professional journalists.

Nonetheless, around half of the total number of imprisoned journalists are being held in just five countries. China and Turkey are still the world’s two biggest prisons for journalists.

Finally, 54 journalists are currently held by armed non-state groups such as Islamic State and the Houthis in Yemen.

Almost three quarters of these hostages come from the ranks of local journalists, who are usually paid little and often have to take enormous risks. The foreign journalists currently held hostage were all kidnapped in Syria but little is known about their present location.

See the full round-up here

* These figures include professional journalists, non-professional journalists and media workers.

BOOKS: By David Robie

The Ghanaian investigative journalist summed up the mood among some 1500 media people with the beaded face veil rather well—a facial security screen symbolising both the safety of the reporter and his sources. But this was no empty gesture. It is characteristic of the man who has captured judges on tape allegedly taking bribes.

As the result of his celebrated documentary, Ghana in the Eyes of God: Epic of Injustice, more than 30 judges and 170 judicial officers were implicated in Ghana’s biggest corruption scandal.

On the same day that investigator Anas Aremeyaw Anas took the stage in his trademark mask at the World Press Freedom Day conference in Jakarta on 3 May 2017, a new book was being launched with the spotlight on wide-ranging research into the safety of journalists after many years of reporters being killed with impunity.

The Assault on Journalism: Building Knowledge to Protect Freedom of Expression is a diverse collection of empirical and theoretical papers presented at a parallel research conference at WPFD2016 in Helsinki, Finland.

The book is divided into four main parts: 1. The Status of Safety of Journalists; 2. The Way Forward (this would have been better placed as the last section before the appendices); and 3. Research, concluding with three chapters on foreign correspondents and local journalists, Pakistani freedoms (or rather lack of them) and Nigerian digital safety.

It also republishes the UNESCO 2016 report Time to Break the Cycle of Violence Against Journalists and the UN safety action plan as the fourth part. However, there is a need for a “rounding off” chapter, which could actually have been Jackie Harrison’s “Setting a New Research Agenda”.

Keynote Helsinki address
Professor Simon Cottle’s introduction, “Journalist Killings and the Responsibility to Report”, was the keynote academic address in Helsinki. He cites figures compiled by the International News Safety Institute (INSI) indicating that around the world 111 media workers were killed in 2016 and 115 the following year. He also cites a Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) figure showing 2012 journalists being killed since 1992.

“Many of these deaths go largely unnoticed and unreported in the world’s media,” Cottle notes (p. 21). He also points to the deaths of American journalist Marie Colvin (wrongly named as Mary in the book)—described by many of her peers as ‘the greatest war correspondent of her generation’—and French photographer Rémi Ochlok in a bombardment of the Baba Amro district in the Syrian city of Homs on 22 February 2012 (Conroy, 2013).

Homs was earlier this year recaptured by the Assad regime. While admitting that high-profile deaths such these “remind us of the terrible price that can be paid by Western correspondents and photojournalists” when reporting conflict, they are not an accurate representation of journalist killings around the globe.

Data collected by world media freedom monitoring agencies show that most journalist killings and incidents of intimidation actually target local and “indigenous” journalists. The reason is simple, according to Cottle:

“Following the end of the Cold War, the world’s political tectonic plates moved and fragmented, creating a situation of multiple power plays and shifting political actors that no longer align in a predictable, bipolar world of allegiances.” (p. 22)

Cottle argues for a greater mandate for the safeguarding of journalists in their responsibilities to report from dangerous places. “In violent times, [the protection] cannot therefore be simply seen as a matter to do with ‘journalists’ or, even more broadly, as simply about ‘journalism’.”

Genesis of journalism safety
Guy Berger, director of UNESCO’s Freedom of Expression division in Paris, explores the genesis of journalism safety issues and why they have become critical to the global free media agenda. Acknowledging that the end of the Cold War enabled a fresh focus on safety issues, he says “it was the harsh reality that drove safety to the top of the agenda” (p. 36).

Outlining the objectives of the UN plan of action, especially against extrajudicial killings, Berger argues the need for strategic partnerships with a gender-sensitive approach. Berger, former head of journalism at Rhodes University in South Africa, also acknowledges the “growing positive response from academia” since 2014 with research programmes and initiatives on the topic of safety and impunity.

This academic response was reflected again at WPFD2017 in Jakarta, although the two days of research papers are more likely to be the basis of commentary and analytical pieces in social media and popular online outlets rather another book at this stage.

Two of the more interesting chapters are “Gendering War and Peace Journalism” by Berit von der Lippe and Rune Ottosen and “Collaboration is the Future” by Thomas Hanitzsch. While acknowledging that the storytelling domination of war and glory through the “masculinised memory” of males in powerful positions and male reporters has been challenged by a growing “women’s presence” among political leaders and war-reporting media, the hegemonic discourse largely remains intact.

“War reporting has been overrepresented by elite sources like politicians, high ranking military officers and state officials. These elite sources are collectively dominated by men and it will require more than more women journalists to change this male hegemony.” (p. 63)

Von der Lippe and Ottosen offer a useful encapsulation of Galtung’s model of “war journalism” and “peace journalism”: “War journalism is violence-oriented, propaganda-oriented, elite-oriented and victory-oriented; peace journalism is people oriented … focuses on the victims (often civilian casualties) and thus gives voice to the voiceless”.

It is also truth-oriented. However, the authors are critical of notions of liberal feminism being assumed to offer better or more peace journalism.

‘Coordinated cooperation’ model
As they note, women in general do not share some “gender-specific style of … journalistic philosophy”. Hanitzsch shares his “coordinated cooperation model” on international
collaborative research experience, particularly with the 10-year-old Worlds of Journalism Study involving 27,500 journalists in 67 countries. He makes a plea for wider adoption of this approach to collaborative research in the “network era”.

Overall, this is a very timely and valuable volume for journalism educators and researchers—and also for journalists and journalism safety advocates themselves. Nordicom, UNESCO and IAMCR deserve commendation for bringing this research collection to fruition.

The Assault on Journalism: Building Knowledge to Protect Freedom of Expression, edited by Ulla Carlsson and Reeta Pöyhtäri. Gothenburg, Sweden: Nordic Information Centre for Media and Communication Research (Nordicom). 2017. 363 pages. ISBN 9789187957505

This review was published originally in Pacific Journalism Review.

References
Anas Aremeyaw Anas (2015). Ghana in the Eyes of God; Epic of Injustice [Documentary]. Retrieved from www.youtube.com/watch?v=0S4rgAbYaZc

Conroy, P. (2013). Under the wire: Marie Colvin’s final assignment. New York: Weinstein Books.

Authorities in the Maldives should swiftly identify and bring to justice those responsible for the murder of blogger Yameen Rasheed, says the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Rasheed died after he was found with multiple stab wounds in the stairway of his apartment building, according to media reports circulated just as CPJ was releasing its report on the state of global media freedom ahead of next week’s World Press Freedom Day events in Jakarta, Indonesia.

The latest CPJ report said that 259 journalists had been detained or jailed during 2016 and 1236 media people killed since 1992.

Al Jazeera, whose reporter Mahmoud Hussein was among those detained in Egypt, featured a news story about the latest report and an Inside Story programme asking whether the use of new technology making censorship easier.

Technologies like social media and surveillance had led to a rise in killings and imprisonment of reporters around the world, said CPJ.

The CPJ figures showed Egypt to be one of the most dangerous countries in the world to work as a journalist, Al Jazeera said.

Hussein, who was arrested in Egypt while on holiday, is awaiting trial on charges of “spreading false news”.

Al Jazeera has denied the allegations and is demanding his immediate release.

Satirical blogger
In the Maldives, Yameen Rasheed was transported to Indira Gandhi Memorial Hospital, where he died while receiving treatment, according to Raajje TV.

He had 16 stab wounds to his chest, neck, and throat, the independent broadcaster reported.

Rasheed, 29, was known for his satirical political commentary on his blog, The Daily Panic, and on Twitter. Before his death, he had complained on social media that police had not acted in response to death threats he said he had received.

“Maldivian authorities should spare no effort to identify and prosecute Yameen Rasheed’s killers,” CPJ Asia programme coordinator Steven Butler said from Washington, DC.

“The Maldives must not become a country where bloggers can be murdered with impunity.”

The Maldives Police Service said in a statement it was investigating the murder. In a statement, President Abdulla Yameen Abdulla Gayoom condemned the crime and sent condolences to Rasheed’s family.

Rasheed led the “Find Moyameeha” campaign after his friend and Minivan News reporter Ahmed Rilwan Abdulla was abducted in 2014. Minivan News later changed its name to the Maldives Independent.

Rilwan is still missing.

• CPJ media freedom report for 2016
• Activists, media freedom advocates plan ‘global action’ on West Papua

Seven months into the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte, press freedom remains under pressure in the Philippines.

The country has been one of the most dangerous for journalists in recent years – the International Press Institute (IPI) has recorded the deaths of 128 journalists in connection with their work since 1997 – and only one week into the year it mourned the first journalist killed in 2017.

On January 6, Mario Contaoi was riding his motorbike home to Magsingal Town on a national highway when unidentified assailants on motorbikes shot him six times. The former university professor, radio announcer and environmental activist succumbed to his injuries in the early hours of January 7.

Just three weeks earlier, Larry Que, a Filipino publisher-columnist, was shot dead after alleging that local officials had ties to the manufacture of illegal drugs.

The circumstances and killers’ motives in both murders remain unclear, highlighting the impunity surrounding journalists’ killings in the country and the lingering threat it poses to their safety.

Since Duterte took office on June 30, he has gained an international reputation for his controversial statements and extreme positions. The war on crime and drugs launched in July that was a focus of his populist campaign is estimated to have taken 6000 lives, many in summary and extrajudicial killings.

Seven months into Duterte’s term, IPI spoke with journalists and civil society representatives in the Philippines to take a closer look at press freedom and journalists’ safety.

Touchy relationship
The president has had a touchy relationship with the media. Just weeks before his inauguration, Duterte said in a May 31 press conference that journalists who were killed were responsible for their own fate “because they extorted, accepted bribes, took sides or attacked their victims needlessly”.

The statement drew vociferous objections from both media and civil society groups. They argued that Duterte’s comments not only reinforced the misconception of journalists as corrupt, but also created a fiction that only corrupt journalists had been killed, justifying their murder.

In an interview with IPI, Kathryn Roja Raymundo, press freedom alerts and communications officer for the Bangkok-based Southeast Asian Press Association (SEAPA) disputed Duterte’s allegations.

“Based on evidence, journalists and media workers in the Philippines were murdered for doing their work investigating and exposing corruption,” she said.

“Killing is killing and should not be justified or condoned, especially by government officials elected to promote and protect the rule of law.”

In fact, according to the Centre for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR), a local NGO based in Makati City, only eight to 10 percent of all journalists killed since 2000 were actually involved in corrupt practices.

Early missteps
Beyond his pre-inauguration statements, Duterte made other early missteps, including limiting access to information and press conferences, and flip-flopping on statements. Observers argue this contributed to misconceptions and set back efforts to improve media literacy in the Philippines.

“Many Filipinos do not understand how the press works, particularly its adversarial function in a democratic society,” Melanie Pinlac, Freedom Fund for Filipino Journalists coordinator for CMFR, commented.

Roja Raymundo said that, in the Philippines, actions that impair press freedom tend to be extra-legal, rather than the result of specific laws or direct government intervention. But Pinlac argued that Duterte’s openly negative attitude towards the press has taken a toll on journalists and other media workers.

“They are more cautious in newsgathering and reporting about the programs of the current government, and vigilant in monitoring the war on drugs,” she said.

Unfortunately, Duterte’s cynicism towards the press appears to be catching on among his supporters. Journalists who criticise the president’s policies or cover sensitive topics like drug trafficking or corruption face defamation suits and an online backlash.

Duterte’s supporters attack them outright or report their online accounts to social media platforms, demanding the takedown of “inappropriate content”.

Roby Alampay, editor-in-chief of Filipino BusinessWorld and InterAkyson, criticised the platforms for their reaction.

“When it comes to Facebook in particular, I am less concerned about fake news and gullibility of people, I am less concerned about the algorithms of Facebook, and more concerned about Facebook’s inability to stand up and defend journalists that they have recognised, journalists with certified accounts,” he told IPI.

The dynamics of social media mean that this stifles not only journalists, but society. Alampay said that in the current climate, no public debate or exchange of ideas is encouraged and Duterte supporters are quick to silence any dissenting opinions. Online harassment causes exhaustion and fatigue, if not fear, in society.

“It is like debating with a wall,” he said. “It is like debating with a drunk.”

Reason for hope?
Nevertheless, some journalists say there is reason for hope. Alampay said he believes that the press in the Philippines is still among the freest of the region and that, despite Duterte’s personal hostile attitude and often bad behaviour, he is still accessible and willing to answer journalists’ questions.

There also have been positive developments. In late July, Duterte issued an executive order promoting access to information. Although the right is guaranteed by the Philippines’ 1987 Constitution, many citizens are not aware of their rights, Pinlac says.

The executive order is a step in the right direction, but observers say that similar legislation applying to all government bodies should be adopted to ensure the public’s access to information.

In October, Duterte also signed an administrative order creating a “Presidential Task Force on the violation of the right to life, liberty and security of members of the media”.

The Task Force is intended to provide security to those under threat and to monitor cases of killed journalists to address the prevailing impunity with which those cases have been met.

Roja Raymundo noted that, since 1986, only 17 people have been convicted in the killings of journalists who died in connection with their work.

Both her organisation and the CMFR have made recommendations to the government on improving the press freedom situation; chief among them is the creation of a multi-stakeholder quick response team, including representatives of media and civil society. The groups also suggested reviewing investigation practices and rules of court that are prone to abuse.

Alampay cited a need to change a misconception of journalism in society, commenting that learning about information and media literacy should start “as soon as kids have email and access to social media”.

However, whether Duterte will manage to effectively address these pressing issues remains to be determined. Although orders on access to information and the safety of journalists spark hope, similar efforts by previous administrations were unable to end impunity and offer real safeguards for journalists.

Florence Peschke is an International Press Institute contributor.

• Duterte’s tough stance, impunity big challenges for media in Philippines