Honoring Murdered Journalists

November 2nd celebrates the last day of the Mexican ‘Day of the Dead’ Holiday. Since 2013, it also shares the date with the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists. All over the world, press freedoms are under assault with journalists, often critical of governments or investigating corruption, being threatened, harassed, detained, trolled, tortured and murdered. So far this year, at least 34 journalists have been killed and more than 235 are imprisoned.

Unsolved murders of journalists are the new normal. For those journalists who have been murdered, in 9 out of 10 cases, their killers will not be brought to justice. These include high profile cases such as Daphne Caruana Galizia, killed in a car bomb in Malta after reporting on the Panama Papers; an investigation has finally begun 2 years after her murder. Thirteen months after Khashoggi’s killing, no independent criminal investigation has taken place. Meanwhile, in Saudi Arabia it’s business as usual. The country will host the G20 summit next November, despite the controversies implicating the regime and despite the imprisonment of 30 journalists and bloggers. Mexico, one of the world’s deadliest places to be a journalist, leads in murders this year, with 10 journalists killed and no convictions.

Impunity. The word speaks volumes and sums up the sad state of affairs worldwide when it comes to defending human rights, freedom of the press, and opinion. Just as democracy and democratic values are increasingly challenged, the forces arrayed to silence critical voices around the world continue to mass. We’ve seen it with the rise of authoritarianism. And we see it with the rise of violence used in authoritarian countries (and beyond) to silence dissent. 

A growing number of countries have mastered technology to boost their agendas and censor dissenting voices. They excel on social media platforms where they successfully weaponize information via misinformation and disinformation campaigns; and engage in online harassment of journalists, whether through individual targeting or orchestrated harassment campaigns. The technology arsenal deployed by these actors goes well beyond social media. Surveillance technology and the strategic use of (costly) spyware to track down reporters and their sources has also been effective. Meanwhile, online censorship efforts to help control information are gathering pace. Internet sovereignty models, like China’s so-called ‘Great Firewall’ and more recently, Russia’s efforts to establish a ‘sovereign internet’ to disconnect its internet from the rest of the world, are increasingly being exported.

As San Francisco celebrates 'Día de Muertos', I will be attending one of the processions as I have done in the past, but this time not only for departed loved ones but also for the journalists who lost their lives doing their jobs as we also mark the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists.

Views my own.