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VIENNA, Jan 2 (NNN-AGENCIES) — In 2021, a total of 45 journalists were killed in connection with their work, an International Press Institute (IPI) research revealed.
Mexico, Afghanistan and India are currently the three deadliest countries for journalists to work in.
Of the number, nine journalists were killed in Sub-Saharan Africa, most of whom were in the Democratic Republic of Congo, followed by Burkina Faso and Somalia.
A press release issued by IPI said the sombre tally “reflects the continued risks of doing journalism and reaffirms journalist safety as a global challenge”.
IPI called on the authorities to end impunity for these crimes and to ensure the protection of journalists, who must be able to do their work freely and safely.
The IPI global network published its yearly Death Watch on Wednesday.
IPI’s research showed that since the beginning of 2021, “a total of 45 journalists were killed in connection with their work, or lost their lives on assignment”.
Of these 45 journalists, 40 were male and five were female, it said.
A total of 28 were targeted due to their work, while three were killed while covering conflict, two lost their lives covering civil unrest, and one journalist was killed while on assignment.
Eleven cases are still under investigation.
The Death Watch includes names of journalists who were deliberately targeted because of their profession – either because of their reporting or simply because they were journalists – as well as those who lost their lives while covering conflict or while on assignment.
IPI’s list includes journalists, editors, and reporters, as well as media workers who directly contribute to news content, such as camerapersons.
Since 1997, IPI has tracked cases of journalists killed because of their work – either murdered or killed while doing their job.
The list includes independent Somali journalist Jamal Farah Adan, who was shot by gunmen on March 1. The extremist group Al-Shabaab later claimed responsibility.
In July, Mexican journalist Ricardo Dominguez López, owner of news website InfoGuaymas, was shot to death in the parking lot of a supermarket on his 47th birthday.
Some – but not all – journalists had received death threats before they were murdered. For instance, Shannaz Roafi, Sadia Sadat, and Mursal Wahidi worked for the independent radio and TV station Enikass in Afghanistan, which had received threats from extremist groups for broadcasting television shows.
Rasha Abdullah Al-Harazi, a journalist from Yemen who died in a targeted car bomb attack while she was nine months pregnant, had received many threats in the months before her death, Khalid Ibrahim of the Gulf Centre for Human Rights told IPI.
“By phone, she was told to stop doing journalism”, he said. “But we didn’t know it would be this serious.” — NNN-AGENCIES
