IFEX - News from the international freedom of expression community
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PRESS RELEASE - INTERNATIONAL

30 April 2003

IPI calls for increased awareness of journalists' safety on World Press
Freedom Day

SOURCE: International Press Institute (IPI), Vienna

(IPI/IFEX) - The following is an IPI press release:

Vienna, 30 April 2003

IPI Calls for Increased Awareness of Journalists' Safety on World Press
Freedom Day, 3 May 2003

With 54 journalists killed in 2002 and 23 journalists killed since the start
of this year, 14 of them during the war in Iraq, the need for increased
safety for the media has never been more urgent.

Across the world, journalists face increased threats to their physical
safety: from Colombia, where 18 journalists have been killed since the start
of 2002, to Russia, where 9 journalists have been killed in the same period.

According to IPI's statistics, since 1997, 352 journalists have been killed
at the rate of nearly 5 per month, many of them in the most appalling of
circumstances. In breaking down the total figure for deaths from 1 January
1997 to 19 April 2003, 43 journalists were killed in Africa, 109 in the
Americas, 76 in Asia, 85 in Europe, and 39 in the Middle East and North
Africa.

Such deaths have placed a high price on the right of everyone under Article
19 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights to "seek,
receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of
frontiers," and they reveal the desperate need for increased vigilance from
the international community and governments, if journalists are to continue
in their role as watchdogs. The recent events in Iraq have only served to
reaffirm this need.

From the outset of the war, journalists were killed during bombing raids, in
conflict on the ground, in a suicide bombing, and in tragic accidents where
journalists appear to have been mistaken for enemy forces. One of the
deadliest days in the fighting occurred on 8 April, when three journalists
were killed: two when the Hotel Palestine, where journalists were staying in
Baghdad, was shelled, and one in the bombing of the Baghdad office of
Qatar-based broadcaster Al-Jazeera.

When examining these incidents, IPI believes that these deaths could have
been avoided if there had been better awareness among allied officers and
their subordinates that journalists were working at these sites. It is
therefore necessary to explore possible methods of better coordination
between governments, the military and the media in times of war.

With this in mind and to mark the occasion of World Press Freedom Day, 3 May
2003, the International Press Institute (IPI), the global network of
editors, leading journalists and media executives in over 115 countries, in
conjunction with the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), will
officially launch the International News Safety Institute (INSI). Managed by
a key group of industry leaders in the field of media safety and tasked with
fostering good practice in the provision of safety training, the
Brussels-based INSI will work towards reducing the risks for journalists
practicing their profession.

On World Press Freedom Day, IPI calls on governments around the world to
accept the right of journalists to report freely on events, including
conflicts, to do everything possible to ensure the safety of journalists,
and to prevent the murderers of journalists from escaping with impunity.

For more information, see the "IPI Death Watch" and the "IPI World Press
Freedom Review 2002" on the IPI Website: www.freemedia.at

For further information, contact IPI at Spiegelgasse 2, A-1010 Vienna,
Austria, tel: +43 1 512 90 11, fax: +43 1 512 90 14, e-mail: Michael Kudlak
at [email protected], Barbara Trionfi at [email protected], or David
Dadge at [email protected], Internet site: www.freemedia.at

The information contained in this press release is the sole responsibility
of IPI. In citing this material for broadcast or publication, please credit
IPI.
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