{"id":121031,"date":"2021-12-09T18:00:06","date_gmt":"2021-12-10T01:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=121031"},"modified":"2021-12-09T18:00:06","modified_gmt":"2021-12-10T01:00:06","slug":"afghanistan-followed-by-mexico-pakistan-india-emerge-dangerous-for-journalists-in-2021","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2021\/12\/09\/afghanistan-followed-by-mexico-pakistan-india-emerge-dangerous-for-journalists-in-2021\/","title":{"rendered":"Afghanistan followed by Mexico, Pakistan, India emerge dangerous for journalists in 2021"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nava Thakuria<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

Geneva\/Guwahati, 9 December 2021: Afghanistan and Mexico\nare the most dangerous countries for media work this year, the Press Emblem\nCampaign (PEC) said in its annual report in Geneva on Thursday in view of Human\nRights Day. Since 1 January, 76 media workers have been killed in 28 countries\naround the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Afghanistan leads with 12 assassinations, ahead of Mexico\nwhere 10 journalists were killed. Among the most dangerous countries are\nPakistan (7), India (6), Yemen (4), Democratic Republic of Congo  (3) and the Philippines (3 killed).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two deaths were recorded in Azerbaijan, Bangladesh,\nBrazil, Burkina-Faso, Colombia, as well as in Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Somalia\nand Turkey. Finally, one victim has been identified in the following countries:\nEcuador, Gaza, Georgia, Ghana, Greece, Guatemala,  Haiti, Lebanon, Netherlands, Syria, and the\nUnited States of America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of the 76 journalists murdered, 29 were in war zones\n(Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Burkina Faso, DRC, Ethiopia, Gaza, Somalia, Syria,\nand Yemen). Terrorist groups were responsible of at least 20 murders\n(Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen), an increase compared\nto previous years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The PEC strongly condemns these attacks and calls for\nthose responsible for these crimes to be brought to justice. By region, Asia,\nwith 39 dead (+6), is ahead of Latin America 17 (-10), Africa 14 (+5), Europe 5\n(+2) and North America 1 (+1).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The number of journalists killed decreased by 8%\ncompared to the same period of last year, a slight improvement. Improvement has\ntaken place in Latin America outside of Mexico, deterioration is observed in\nAfrica and Europe. Mexico and Afghanistan have been among the most dangerous\ncountries for journalists for many years, but the rise in Africa is\nparticularly worrying\u201d, commented PEC Secretary General Blaise Lempen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Europe, the targeted killings of 3 journalists, in\nGreece, Georgia and the Netherlands is a very sad  development. In Burma (Myanmar) after the\ncoup and in Afghanistan after the departure of the NATO troops, press freedom\nhas registered a very serious setback.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the last 5 years, Mexico has recorded the highest\nvictims (66), ahead of Afghanistan (53), then India (40), Pakistan (35), Syria\n(29), the Philippines (21), Iraq (18), Yemen (17), and Somalia (16). In ten\nyears, from 2012 to 2021, 1150 journalists were killed, or 115 per year, 2.2\nper week, according to figures from the PEC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One positive development, says PEC President Hedayat\nAbdel Nabi is that the awareness across the globe has become more widespread\ndue to the enthusiastic engagement of media colleagues to spread the message of\nmedia protection and the safety of journalists as well as press freedom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

India has recently lost Buddhinath Jha (journalist cum\nRight to Information (RTI) activist, also known as Avinash Jha), whose body was\nfound in Madhubani locality of  Bihar on\n12 November. The Benipatti-based family claimed that Buddhinath was offered a\nlot of money (as bribes) by some illegal healthcare clinic owners, but he did\nnot listen to them. Later he received a number of threatening calls from\nunknown persons,\u201d said Nava Thakuria, PEC\u2019s India representative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prior to him, the populous country lost five journalists\nnamely Ashu Yadav, Sulabh Srivastava, Ch. Keshav, Manish Kumar Singh and Raman\nKashyap to assailants this year. Indian photojournalist Danish Siddiqui was\nkilled in Afghanistan. India\u2019s two neighbours Pakistan and Bangladesh reported\n(7 and 2 respectively) media casualties, however Bhutan, Nepal, Tibet (China),\nMaldives, Sri Lanka and Myanmar have not reported any incident of journo-murder\ntill date this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nava Thakuria Geneva\/Guwahati, 9 December 2021: Afghanistan and Mexico are the most dangerous countries for media work this year, the Press Emblem Campaign (PEC) said in its annual report in Geneva on Thursday in view of Human Rights Day. Since 1 January, 76 media workers have been killed in 28 countries around the world. Afghanistan […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-121031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nava-thakuria"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121031"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121031\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}