Number of journalists killed in Gaza, highest of any war in decades

Big News Network.com
1 Nov 2024

Journalists who expose wrongdoing and show the horrific reality of conflict are human rights defenders, and attacks against them affect everyone's right to freedom of expression and access to information, leaving us all less well informed, the UN's top human rights official said Friday, ahead of the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists, marked annually on 2 November.

Yet, these attacks are increasing, and journalists are being killed, harassed, intimidated, imprisoned or silenced, from Gaza and Ukraine to Sudan, Myanmar and beyond, said the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk Friday.

The toll is shockingly high for Palestinian journalists. They must be so much better protected, the UN rights chief said.

According to Palestinian authorities, at least 183 journalists and media workers have been killed by Israeli attacks on Gaza since October last year. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ puts the figure at 134, which includes deaths in the West Bank, Lebanon and Syria as well, however the group says it is investigating more than 130 additional cases of potential killings, arrests and injuries, but many are difficult to document amid the harsh conditions.

"Since the war in Gaza started, journalists have been paying the highest price, their lives, for their reporting. Without protection, equipment, international presence, communications, or food and water, they are still doing their crucial jobs to tell the world the truth," CPJ Program Director Carlos Martinez de la Serna said in New York Friday. "Every time a journalist is killed, injured, arrested, or forced to go to exile, we lose fragments of the truth. Those responsible for these casualties face dual trials: one under international law and another before history's unforgiving gaze."

The UN will observe Saturday as the International Day to End Impunity for crimes against journalists, according to the UN chief's spokesperson Stephane Dujarric.

"In his message for the day, the secretary-general underscores that a free press is fundamental to human rights, to democracy and to the rule of law," Dujarric said.

"Recent years have seen an alarming rate of fatalities in conflict zones, particularly in Gaza, which has seen the highest number of killings of journalists and media workers in a war in decades. In his message, he warned that journalists in Gaza have been killed at a level unseen by any conflict in modern times.

"The ongoing ban preventing international journalists from Gaza suffocates the truth even further," he said.

Two small nations, Haiti and Israel, are now the world's biggest offenders in letting journalists' murderers go unpunished, according to CPJ's 2024 Global Impunity Index, which measures unsolved murders in proportion to a country's population. This year is the first time Israel has appeared in CPJ's index since its inception in 2008.

The recent escalation of Israel's war in Lebanon has imperiled the press as they face Israeli strikes that have destroyed news outlet offices and killed at least three journalists, in addition to being assaulted, obstructed, threatened, and detained while reporting, CPJ said in a report Friday.

At about 3am last Friday (October 25 2024), an Israeli airstrike hit a compound housing 18 journalists from multiple media outlets in Hasbaya, a town in southern Lebanon. The strike killed pro-Hezbollah Al-Mayadeen TV's camera operator Ghassan Najjar, broadcast engineer Mohammed Reda, and Hezbollah-owned Al-Manar TV's camera operator Wissam Kassem.

According to the BBC, the IDF said it struck a Hezbollah military structure in Hasbaya where "terrorists were operating." The IDF said it received reports "several hours after the strike" that journalists had been hit, adding that "the incident is under review."

A car marked "Press" at the site of an Israeli airstrike that targeted the area where 18 journalists were located in the southern Lebanese village of Hasbaya on October 25, 2024. (Photo credit: AFP | Ali Hankir).

Lebanon, according to CPJ, filed a complaint with the U.N. Security Council on Monday, over the strike.

Israeli strikes have killed at least three additional journalists while on assignment and injured at least 11 in Lebanon since the Israel Defense Forces and Lebanon's militant group Hezbollah began exchanging fire in October 2023, CPJ said. Israel escalated tensions on October 1, 2024, when they launched a ground invasion into Lebanon.

CPJ says it is investigating another five killings of journalists and media workers in Lebanon by Israel since September 23 to determine if they were killed in relation to their work.

"Journalists are civilians, and the international community has an obligation to protect them by making it clear to Israel that their long-standing record of aggression and impunity in journalist killings will not be tolerated," CPJ Program Director Carlos Martinez de la Serna said Friday. "International bodies must be given access to conduct independent investigations into these killings. Deadly attacks on journalists, who are protected under international humanitarian law, and obstructions to reporting must immediately stop."

Top photo - Credit: Ahmad Hasaballah | Getty Images.

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