Guwahati: The international organisation for media safety and rights, Press Emblem Campaign (PEC), noted on Wednesday that “more has to be done to combat impunity on the ground” as it observed the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists 2022.
The PEC stated that although there has been some progress, it is still far from enough after pleading for the start of the work on an international agreement.
President of PEC Blaise Lempen, said, “Recently, five years after the killing of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia in October 2017 in Malta, two brothers were sentenced to 40 years in prison on 14 October, Justice is very slow but better than nothing.”
Despite these uncommon instances most crimes go unpunished. The perpetrators of the crime are not held accountable.
A recent UNESCO survey found that 86% of crimes against journalists went unpunished. Only 9% of the decline occurs in ten years. Globally resolved cases increased from 11% in 2018 to 14% in 2022, according to UNESCO.
“2022 will be a particularly deadly year for journalists with 107 media workers (the latest one is Pakistani female journalist Sadaf Naeem) killed. It is an increase of 57% in 10 months compared to last year. So far Ukraine, Mexico, Pakistan, Haiti emerge as the most dangerous countries for journalists this year. It is important that the killing of journalists in Ukraine don’t go unpunished and those crimes must be investigated independently,” added Lempen.
PEC is urging nations once more to support the establishment of a United Nations treaty on media professionals’ safety.
The UN has passed 13 resolutions on the safety of journalists and it just celebrated the tenth anniversary of its plan of action on the subject. Nevertheless, journalists continue to face violence simply for carrying out their duties.
In this context, PEC applauds the international campaign for the approval of a convention aimed at protecting media workers and journalists, which was formally launched by the International Federation of Journalists at the UNHRC’s 51st session in Geneva on September 30, 2017.
Arshad Sharif, Muhammad Younis, Iftikhar Ahmed, Hasnain Shah, Murtaza Shar and Athar Mateen were journalists who Pakistan previously lost to attackers since 1 January. The murders of the journalists Rohit Kumar Biswal, Sudhir Saini, Juned Khan Pathan and Subhash Kumar Mahato took place in India its neighbour.
Military crimes claimed the lives of three journalists (Hashibur Rahaman Rubel, Mohiuddin Sarker Nayeem, and Abdul Bari) in Bangladesh as well as photojournalist Aye Kyaw and reporter Pu Tui Dim in Myanmar.