Journalists & Media Staff Killed in 2009
Killed journalist's family demands truth
Source : Bangkok Post 30.07.2010
The family of the Italian news photographer killed during the red-shirt protest violence has urged Thai authorities to show some progress in investigating his death.
Elisabetta Polenghi, a younger sister of Fabio Polenghi, a photojournalist who was shot on May 19 during the military crackdown on the anti-government encampment in Bangkok, said on Friday she was still determined to know the final truth about how her brother died.
“I have come here for the second time after my brother’s cremation late May. I want to be informed about the autopsy and hear about the conclusions. But two months are perhaps too soon to get it,” said Ms Polenghi, who is alsoa professional still photographer.
Speaking through an interpreter at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand, she said her family was adamant abolut wanting some explanations and see something would be done and that her dead brother's case would be eventually closed.
“I’d like to hear any breakthrough or I’ll have to come back in a month,” she said.
Polenghi who was the second foreign journalist killed during the controntation between the red-shirts and government forces.
Reuters television cameraman Hiro Muramoto was killed on April 10 during the Ratchadamnoen clash. The Japanese foreign minister raised the issue with the Thai minister during their meeting last week in Hanoi.
Ms Polenghi has managed to meet Pathumwan police officers with the assistance of the Italian embassy and Bangkok-based friends and acquire a thick copy of the autopsy report from the police. She has also met PM's Office Minister Ong-art Klampaiboon who expressed condolences to her family.
Speaking about her brother, with occasional pauses to wipe away tears, Ms Polenghi said: “His personal Facebook page is still open. He said two days before his death that --- 'everyday is a gift, so do your best'.”
While realising the difficulties in establishing facts and that her brother was just one of the 90 deaths, she did not believe the Thai authorities have actually made any progress in their investigation.
“It’s still dramatic and only some two months away. However it’s our family trait that we will seek the truth, to get to the bottom of it, and we passionately want to ensure that the investigation goes in the right direction,” she said.
She said said that she has yet to get possession of her brother’s belongings, including a mobile phone and camera.
"They are not only memories, but they could provide some clues for the investigation and I want the Thai authorities to try to include them in their inquiry,” said Ms Polenghi.
She thanked the unknown people who helped carry her brother’s body away from the Sarasin-Lumpini junction and to the hospital. She said several people had approached her with various kinds of information.
“Fabio was apolitical, me too. I don’t want the inquiry into my brother’s death to become a political investigation. It’s still difficult for me here, to learn about a country I have not lived in,” she said.
Report exposes journalist killings in Honduras
Source : World Socialist Website 29.07.2010
By Rafael Azul
According to a report released on July 27 by the Committee to Protect Journalists, the killing of journalists with impunity that began with the coup that overthrew President Manuel Zelaya last year continues to this day.
The June 28 coup, carried out with the full support and foreknowledge of the Obama administration, set off a wave of popular protests.
Subsequent to the military’s ouster of Zelaya, Washington brokered a deal that prevented his return and sought to legitimize the November elections that gave the coup a facade of democracy and installed Porfirio Lobo as president.
This has not stopped the regime’s violations of civil and human rights of opposition supporters. In an effort to whitewash the record of the coup regime, Lobo created a so-called truth and reconciliation commission that has been cited by the US State Department as evidence that the current government has turned a corner from the crimes of the coup leaders and toward full civil and human rights for all, a claim that is not credible to most political observers.
The violence is directed against not just journalists, but also human rights activists, trade union and peasant leaders and liberal elements in the bourgeoisie. The New York Times cited a report released in June by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights that exposed kidnappings, unlawful detentions, illegal searches and even sexual assaults against opponents of the regime.
Tuesday’s report is the outcome of an investigation carried out by Mike O’Connor, a Mexico City-based journalist for the Committee to Protect Journalists.
O’Connor writes about the unresolved cases of seven journalists who were shot dead between March and June. He calls these crimes, “an astonishing number of murders in such a short time in a country of 7.5 million. Six of the murders occurred in the span of just seven weeks, and most were clearly assassinations carried out by hit men.” Three of the victims were murdered in the course of their work. These three are: TV anchor Nahúm Palacios Arteaga, shot dead on March 14, in the town of Tocoa; radio and TV journalist David Meza Montesinos, killed on March 11, in La Ceiba and Joseph Hernández Ochoa, also a TV journalist, killed on March 1, in Tegucigalpa, the nation’s capital.
O’Connor cannot say for certain that four other journalists—Luis Arturo Mondragón, killed on June 14 in El Paraíso; Jorge Alberto Orellana, killed on April 20, in San Pedro Sula; and José Bayardo Mairena and Manuel Juárez killed March 26 in Juticalpa—were shot because of their journalistic work.
Palacios had opposed the June 2009 coup and had allowed opponents of the coup to broadcast their message. Threats against this well-known journalist led the Organization of American States to ask President Lobo to provide protection for Palacios. Despite being required by international agreements to carry out this request, the Honduran government refused. By defying the OAS, the Lobo administration virtually provided his killers with a license to carry out Palacios’s execution. Palacios was ambushed and killed, together with a female companion, Dr. Yorleny Sánchez.
In the months leading up to his assassination, Palacios had sided with local peasants whose land had been taken from them by wealthy landlords, in violation of Honduran agrarian reform laws.
Three days earlier, Meza was killed in the city of La Ceiba. Meza had been involved in a campaign to expose police corruption, including links between the police and a drug running organization.
Hernandez, 25, was at the beginning of his career as a TV journalist. According to the O’Connor report, he may have been killed for giving a car ride to Karol Cabrera, one of Honduras’s most controversial journalists, who had been a vociferous backer of the coup regime. “Most of the bullets hit Hernández, who died instantly, but Cabrera was seriously injured as well. As soon as she could give interviews, she repeatedly denounced the attack as being directed against her, in connection with her work as a radio commentator.”
Mondragón had been receiving death threats over his anti-corruption reporting. His death came as no surprise to his family. One of his sons told O’Connor that his father had assembled the family to discuss the death threats: “But my father had the attitude that he was going to go ahead anyway. He said he had to continue. He said, ‘If they are going to kill me they won’t threaten first, they’ll just do it.’” The son said the list of people in El Paraíso who could have ordered the killing is short, and that everyone knows who they are.
Orellana was gunned down on April 20 as he left his TV station in San Pedro Sula, Honduras’s second largest city. Though known for his left-wing political views, the official story, according to the San Pedro Sula police chief, is that Orellana was killed by a mugger intent on robbing his cell phone.
While Mairena and Juárez were small town TV and radio reporters who supposedly stayed away from “dangerous” subject matter, they were ambushed in much the same way as all the others. Other reporters told O’Connor that they were caught in the middle of a war between two powerful oligarchic families, which has already created dozens of victims.
O’Connor’s cautiousness notwithstanding, none of these were random assassinations. All seven journalists were assassinated by gunmen who had lain in wait for them.
When it comes to investigating the crimes against the journalists, O’Connor describes scenes worthy of the Keystone cops. Forensic evidence is “lost.” Autopsies are performed badly, if at all. Arrest warrants are issued, but nobody is actually taken into custody.
According to O’Connor, the government’s lack of aggressiveness in investigating these crimes, and indifference to the killings, is strong evidence that “the murders have been conducted with the tacit approval, or even outright complicity, of police, armed forces, or other authorities.” This has resulted in an atmosphere of impunity.
The extraordinary number of killings has had the effect of intimidating the press: “You get the impression that the government wants you in terror so you don’t know what to report. Is this story about drugs too dangerous? What about this one about political corruption? At the end you don’t report anything that will make powerful people uncomfortable,” said Geovany Domínguez, a senior editor of Tiempo newspaper in Tegucigalpa. This is in fact a signal from the Lobo government that any serious journalism that questions any aspect of the regime will not be tolerated.
These murders give the lie to the US claim that the Honduran government has restored civil and human rights.
A month ago, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton demanded that the Organization of American States—which had expelled Honduras in the wake of the June coup—readmit that nation, claiming that the Lobo government was taking steps to reconcile the opposing sides and to respect democratic rights.
These political crimes by death squads in the service of the landowners, drug gangs, the military and the Lobo administration are indicative of a ruling class—desperate to defend its privileges—that is conducting a war against the nation’s workers and peasants, with the full support of the Obama administration.
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Spanish court rules cameraman's death in Iraq constitutes a crime
Source : BBC Monitoring 27.07.2010
Madrid: Seven years and three months after the death of the [Spanish] cameraman Jose Couso during action by the US army against the Hotel Palestine in the midst of the invasion of Baghdad, the Supreme Court has ordered the National High Court to reopen the case. According to the ruling, which was made public yesterday, the military strategy known as "shock and awe" on protected people in the event of an armed conflict - as are journalists - "is criminally attributable to those in command of the specific management of the military operations". Thus, the high court overrode the stay of proceedings issued by the National High Court after the dismissal of the prosecution of Sgt Thomas Gibson, Capt Philip Wolford and Lt-Col Philip Camp, who were accused of causing the death of Couso by firing on the hotel from a tank.
The ruling, which has been delivered by Judge Francisco Monterde, states that "circumstantially", the events "could come under" Articles 611, 608 and 617 of the penal code (which stipulate sentences for indiscriminate or excessive attacks on the civilian population on the occasion of an armed conflict), as well as under rules of international humanitarian law which are detailed specifically, such as the addition protocol to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949 relating to the protection of the victims of international armed conflicts.
Shock and awe
The Supreme Court states that "not even in allegedly defensive military action or in response to prior actual aggressions is it possible to apply circumstances such as self-defence when he who becomes a belligerent carries out any of the acts classed as contrary to the law of war", attacking those who warrant being considered "protected people", according to the terms of our own penal code. For that reason, it considers that the war strategy known as "shock and awe", consisting of acts such as the bombing of protected people and property, is applicable and criminally attributable to the US soldiers responsible for the attack on the Hotel Palestine.
It is the second time that the high court has ordered the National High Court to reopen the case. In December 2006, it already overrode an initial shelving of the case, rejecting that the death could be classed as "an act of war". In the opinion of the Supreme Court, the National High Court ruling anticipates a verdict of not guilty when the investigations ordered by Judge Santiago Pedraz nor those that might have been proposed in the future have not been exhausted.
BBC Mon EU1 EuroPol ME1 MEPol MD1 Media rap/tj
Boss of western Nepal FM station shot dead
Source : BBC Monitoring 23.07.2010
An unidentified group has shot dead Hemraj Dhital, chairman of Radio Tulsipur FM 100.2 MHz, in Dang [western Nepal] Thursday evening [22 July]. A group of about four or five persons aged between 20 to 25 opened fire at Dhital at Jaspur, some 8 km south of Tulsipur, at about 7.45 p.m. today, according to Area Police Office, Tulsipur. [passage omitted]Dahal was immediately taken to Rapti Zonal Hospital, where he died while undergoing treatment.
Police have recovered a used bullet from the incident site. The nature of the incident shows the murder was pre-planned, said Baral.
Dhital is also member of Nepali Congress. He was returning to Tulsipur after an errand in connection with the upcoming general convention of the party when the incident took place.
Broadcasting Association of Nepal (BAN) has condemned the murder and urged the government to investigate on the case immediately and take action against the guilty.
Issuing a press statement after the incident, BAN president Bishnu Hari Dhakal criticized the government for not being serious towards the security of journalists and media workers.
Media entrepreneurs Arun Singhaniya and Jamim Shah were shot dead in Janakpur and Kathmandu respectively a few months ago.
BBC Mon MD1 Media SA1 SAsPol pjt
Indian Express reporter injured in bomb attack dies
Source : Expressindia.com 21.07.2010
Original Headline:Editors Guild 'shocked' over death of Indian Express reporter
The Editors Guild of India Wednesday expressed shock over the death of Indian Express reporter Vijay Pratap Singh, who was injured in a bomb attack outside the Uttar Pradesh finance minister's residence in Allahabad July 12.
'We strongly condemn the criminalisation of politics in Uttar Pradesh and the failure of the police force to protect journalists carrying out their professional duties,' a statement by the guild's president Rajdeep Sardesai and secretary general Coomi Kapoor said.
The Guild urged the UP chief minister to ensure that Singh's family gets all assistance.
'The attack on Finance Minister Nand Gopal Nandi, allegedly by a contract killer, was in broad daylight. We urge UP Chief Minister Mayawati to ensure that the family of this courageous and intrepid correspondent is taken care of,' the statement said.
Singh died in a hospital here Tuesday.
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