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RSF annual roundup on press freedom in 2005
Reporters sans frontières / Reporters Without Borders
January 04, 2006

http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=16088

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The deadliest year for a decade
At last 63 journalists were killed in 2005 while doing their job or for expressing their opinions, the highest annual toll since 1995 (when 64 were killed, 22 of them in Algeria). Five media assistants (fixers, drivers, translators, technicians, security staff and others) were also killed.

For the third year running, Iraq was the world’s most dangerous country for the media, with 24 journalists and 5 media assistants killed. 76 journalists and media assistants have been killed there since the start of fighting in March 2003, more than in the 1955-75 Vietnam War. Terrorist strikes and Iraqi guerrilla attacks were the main cause but the US army killed three of them. Iraqi TV producer Wael al-Bakri, 30, was shot dead by US troops on 28 June. A US Third Infantry Division spokesman admitted the next day in Baghdad that a US unit was involved in his death and said an enquiry had been opened. No result has been announced, nor in the other investigated killings.

In the Philippines too, journalists were killed while trying to inform the public. Their enemies were no longer armed groups but politicians, businessmen and drug-traffickers ready to silence journalists who exposed their crimes. Despite the conviction during the year of the killer of journalist Edgar Damalerio, murdered in 2002 on the island of Mindanao, impunity remained the rule. Journalists in other Asian countries (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka) were also killed because of their work.

Physical attacks on politicians and journalists rocked Lebanon during the year and two leading journalists were killed - Samir Kassir (in June) and Gebran Tueni (December). Kassir was a columnist for the daily An-Nahar and Tueni was the paper’s publisher. May Chidiac, a well-known TV presenter with the station LBC, survived a bomb attack on her car in September but lost a hand and a leg.

Violence against journalists also increased in Africa, with journalists murdered in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone and Somalia and their killers (some of them known) going unpunished. The investigation of the December 2004 murder of Gambian journalist Deyda Hydara, the local correspondent of Agence France-Presse and Reporters Without Borders, made no progress because the authorities did all they could to prevent those responsible from being identified and to ensure they escaped punishment.

In the Americas, two journalists were killed in Mexico for investigating drug smuggling and petrol racketeering. Several journalists were murdered in Russia and Belarus in shady circumstances and some apparently because of their work. Official investigations there, often biased and politically-influenced, hardly ever produce results.

Journalists killed in 2005

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