Team Herald/Based on CPJ report and reportage by the Global Investigative Journalism Network
PANJIM: The 2022 Global Impunity Index of the Committee to Protect Journalists found that no one has been held to account for nearly 80% of 263 journalist murders over the past 10 years worldwide. CPJ seeks justice for these slain journalists, including full and timely investigations and the convictions of those who carry out and order the murders.
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According to CPJ’s 2022 Global Impunity Index report, authored by Jennifer Dunham, CPJ’s deputy editorial director, “the vast majority of killers of journalists continue to get away with murder.” Specifically, the report found that “no one has been held to account for nearly 80% of 263 journalist murders over the past 10 years worldwide.”
Mexico has the highest number of unsolved murders of journalists at 28 followed by India at 20 and Somalia at 19, bringing up the top three of this inglorious list.
These journalists have been killed in retaliation for their work since 2012, with no convictions of their killers. Making its first appearance on the annual index — one year after a military coup toppled the civilian government — is Myanmar, where the ruling junta has jailed dozens of journalists and is suspected of murdering at least three members of the press.
In reference to India, the report states, “But even in less volatile countries with democratically elected governments, authorities show little political will for prosecuting journalists’ killers or curbing violence against the press.” For example, CPJ noted “how accountability for crimes against reporters in the Philippines, India, and Brazil has continued to deteriorate.”
CPJ’s Global Impunity Index, which spotlights countries where members of the press are murdered in retaliation for their reporting and the perpetrators go free, is published annually to mark the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists on November 2. Since 2008, CPJ has been compiling data on countries with the worst records of prosecuting the murderers of journalists as part of a campaign to raise awareness about the entrenched nature of impunity for crimes against the press.
“It’s been open season on journalists for far too long,” said GIJN Executive Director David E Kaplan. “If countries want democracy and development, they’ll need to figure out how to protect the press.”
Finally, CPJ pointed to the ominous environment for independent journalists in Russia. Targeted killings of journalists have declined in that country of late, the report noted. The reasons behind this decline in violent attacks are no cause for celebration, however. CPJ pointed out that after a slow erosion of press freedom in recent years, independent journalism “has almost completely closed since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February, with most of the remaining outlets shutting down under legal and regulatory pressure and thousands of journalists fleeing the country amid a crackdown that has been disastrous for the press in Russia.”
