2024: India records 4 journo-murders, global casualty rises to 179

Nava Thakuria.

Nava Thakuria

As the year 2024 bids farewell, the media fraternity across the globe finds time to express grief over the untimely demise of journalists where the global casualty reaches to 179 in 25 countries during the eventful 12 months. India has maintained the number of journo-murders within 4 which is one more than the casualty reported in 2023. All the media victims this year reported from central India, where  Uttar Pradesh witnessed the first killing of journalists (Ashutosh Srivastava on 13 May), followed by Bihar (Shivshankar Jha on 25 June), Madhya Pradesh (Salman Ali Khan on 17 September) and UP again (Dilip Saini stabbed to death on 31 October).

India’s immediate neighbour  Pakistan, which recorded 3 journo-murders in 2023,  lost 12 media workers to assailants in the byeone year namely Jam Saghir Ahmed Lar, Tahira Nosheen Rana, Muhammad Siddiq Mengel, Mehar Ashfaq Siyal, Kamran Dawar, Nasrullah Gadani, Khalil Jibran, Hasan Zaib, Muhammad Bachal Ghunio, Nisar Lehri, Janan Hussain and Malik Zafar Iqbal. Another neighbour Bangladesh witnessed the murder of Hasan Mehedi, Shakil Hossain, Abu Taher Md Turab, Tahir Zaman Priyo, Pradip Kumar Bhowmik, Tanjil Jahan Islam Tamim and Swapan Kumar Bhadra.

Formerly East Pakistan, the country lost only 2 journalists in 2023 along with Afghanistan and the Philippines with 2 journo-casualties each. Similarly Nepal recorded the killing of Suresh Bhul. In the southeast Asian region, atrocious military rulers of Myanmar  perpetrated the untimely deaths of Ko Myat Thu Tun, Htet Myat Thu  and Win Htut Oo, where Indonesia (Sempurna Pasaribu) and the Philippines (Maria Vilma Rodriguez) witnessed the killing of one journalist each.

The Geneva-based global media safety and rights body  Press Emblem Campaign (PEC) revealed in its annual report that a record number of media workers were killed last year and  almost three quarters of the victim journalists were murdered in conflict zones. December was a particularly dramatic month with 20 more journo-victims, stated the PEC adding that the increase in 2024 compared with 2023 (140 media casualties) under  the same criteria was around 28%.

Conflicts in the Middle East are responsible for more than half of the victims. They have claimed the lives of 91 journalists: at least 80 in the Gaza Strip, 6 in Lebanon, 4 in Syria and 1 in the West Bank. In total, the hostilities in Gaza since 7 October 2023 have killed at least 161 media workers, an unprecedented toll for a conflict in such a short space of time. In 2024, the war in Ukraine resulted in the deaths of 19 Ukrainian journalists (most of whom had joined the army) plus one foreigner (Ryan Evans of Reuters in Kramatorsk). To this must be added the death in custody in Russia on 10 October of Ukrainian journalist Victoria Rochtchina, making a total of 21 victims.

Outside the Middle East and Ukraine, Pakistan had the highest number of journalists killed, 12 since 1 January, a clear deterioration. Russia has 7 journalists killed (including three in Ukrainian territories occupied by Russia and one in Kursk). In Bangladesh, unrest in July left 7 journalists dead. The situation remains very dangerous in Mexico, where 7 journalists have been killed. Hostilities in Sudan caused the death of 6 journalists. In Colombia, 4 media workers were killed, where 4 killed in India, 3 in Iraq and 3 in Myanmar (Burma). Two people were killed in Somalia, two in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and two in Haiti. Cambodia, Chad, Ecuador, Honduras, Indonesia, Jamaica, Nepal and the Philippines, followed with one fatality in each country.

In ten years, the PEC has counted 1,159 victims, an average of 2.25 per week. Over the last five years, the most dangerous countries have been Gaza/West Bank (166), Ukraine (59), Mexico (55), Pakistan (36) and India (32). By continent in 2024, the Middle East had the highest number of victims (92: Gaza, Lebanon, Syria , West Bank and Iraq), ahead of Asia (31). Europe follows (28: Ukraine and Russia), ahead of Latin America (17) and Africa (11). In addition to the Middle East, there has been a deterioration in Asia from one year to the next (31 deaths compared with 12). On the positive side, there were fewer victims in Latin America in 2024 than in 2023 (16 compared with 20).

“We condemn all these crimes, committed in violation of international laws and national legislations. Independent investigations are essential to clarify the circumstances and prosecute those responsible in order to combat impunity. The heavy death toll (heaviest since the beginning of the century), reinforces the need for an international instrument which clarifies the conditions for the protection of the profession of journalism in conflict zones,” commented Blaise Lempen, president of the PEC.

A journalist by profession and based in Switzerland, Lempen asserted that the PEC will continue to work on this without interruption. Unlike other international organizations, he stated that the PEC includes in its statistics all journalists killed, whether or not their deaths were related to their professional activity as it’s very difficult to prove that a crime was committed in connection with a journalist's work without a full and independent investigation, which is often lacking.

(Nava Thakuria is a senior journalist based in Guwahati, the state of Assam, India.)