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A
foreign journalist seriously wounded after a U.S. tank fired at a
hotel filled with journalists
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VIENNA,
March 11 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Sixty-four journalists
were killed across the world in 2003, 19 of them in Iraq, according to a
report published by the International Press Institute (IPI) on
Wednesday, March 10.
This
number is nearly twice the total of the previous year due largely to
deaths in the war in Iraq , the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)
said according to Reuters.
The
worldwide death toll in 2002 had been 19.
With
19 journalists killed in Iraq, 14 during the war, five in the aftermath,
and two missing presumed dead, 2003 was one of the bloodiest years in
recent times for war reporters," said a statement from the
Vienna-based organization, which monitors press freedoms in 115
countries, Agence France-Presse (AFP) said.
The
committee said 136 were jailed around the world, including 39 in China,
which was the biggest jailer of journalists for the fifth year in a row.
Outside
Iraq, another 45 journalists were killed across a total of 19 countries,
with Asia listed as the most dangerous region for a journalist to work.
The
toll issued by the Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Sans Frontiers
(RSF) earlier this year is 42.
Michael
Kudlak, press freedoms advisor at the IPI, told AFP this was because the
various organizations often disagreed over whether a journalist's death
was work-related.
In
the light of the heavy death toll among journalists covering the
U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the IPI called for a review of the way the
military communicates with the media in conflict situations.
"It
is significant that a number of deaths in Iraq might have been avoided
if combat soldiers had been given the same information as their
superiors regarding the whereabouts of journalists," the report
said.
Of
the journalists who died in Iraq, at least four were killed by U.S.
fire, most notably in the April 8 shelling of Baghdad's Palestine Hotel
and the air strike that hit the Baghdad bureau of the Qatar-based
channel Al-Jazeera the same day.
On
April 8, U.S. missiles hit the Baghdad offices of Al-Jazeera, killing
and wounding two staff in what the
Qatar-based Arabic news network said was a deliberate strike.
On
August 18, in yet another crime against journalists in occupied Iraq,
U.S. troops shot dead
an award-winning Reuters cameraman while he was filming on Sunday,
August 17, near a U.S.-run prison in Baghdad.
On
Monday, November 24, the U.S.-handpicked Governing Council in Iraq
banned the Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya from working in Iraq, charging
it with incitement to murder after it broadcast a
Saddam Hussein tape calling for attacks on council members.
Two
killings which, apart from the deaths in Iraq, received the most
international news coverage in 2003 took place in the Palestinian
Occupied Territories, where three reporters were killed in 2002, the
Committee to Protect Journalists said.
Nazih
Darwazeh, a cameraman for Associated Press Television News was shot and
killed by Israeli forces while filming clashes between Palestinian
youths and Israeli troops in Nablus last April, it added.
In
May, James Miller, a British freelance film cameraman director, was
killed by a single shot while his crew approached a group of Israeli
armored personnel carriers in Gaza at night. In both cases, the Israeli
Defense Force launched investigations but has not yet released its
conclusions.
