FJ GENDER COUNCIL STATEMENT
For several years we have kept data on the women journalists killed, sometimes because they were women journalists. We do not say, nor mean, that these deaths are somehow more important or noteworthy than the much larger numbers of male journalists killed, but in recognition of the many years of under-reporting of deaths and violence against women, and women journalists. It is in that spirit that we mourn the loss of six of our sisters in 2015, from France, the Philippines, Somalia, South Sudan and the United States.
From the horrific beginning of last year and the massacre in January at Charlie Hebdo in France, where contributor Elsa Cayat was among those murdered when gunmen burst into the office and began the killing spree. In the Philippines, correspondent Melinda Magsino-Lubis was gunned down at noon on the 13th of April by assailants on motorbike as she walked down the street. She had been receiving death threats since 2005, when she began reporting on local corruption and after that worked as an investigative journalist. In Somalia, one of the worst countries for women to be working as journalists and one where we have regularly seen targeted killings, Hindiyo Haji Mohamed was killed by a car bomb in December. Mohamed was a journalist with the national television station SNTV and had lost her journalist husband to a suicide bomb three years before. In South Sudan, Dalia Marko and Randa George were among five journalists and six others who were killed in an ambush near the Darfur region in January 2015. In the meanwhile, for the first time in the United States, 24-year-old broadcast female journalist Alison Parker for WDBJ7 TV station and her cameraman Adam Ward were killed by a gunman, live on television. Eight shots were reportedly fired and footage from the camera as it dropped recorded screams, chaos and the image of the killer. Looking at the details of these deaths tell us that, while certain areas of the globe remain very dangerous to journalists and feature on the IFJ’s lists of killed journalists year after year, as The Philippines, Somalia, and South Sudan, the West is no longer immune. So, our wish as we start the New Year 2016 remains the same as always, for all journalists: End Targeting. End Killings. End Violence. End Impunity.
MINDY RAN - CO-CHAIR IFJ GENDER COUNCIL
International Federation of Journalists – IFJ
Direct Link to Full 43-Page 2016 IFJ Report:
http://www.ifj.org/fileadmin/documents/25_Report_Final_sreads_web.pdf
Извор: WUNRN – 07.02.2016
