Impunity Spotlight: Iraq
Kawa Garmyane, Rayel, Awene
December 5, 2013, in Kalar, Sulaymaniyah, Iraq
Unknown gunmen shot and killed Garmyane outside his home in town of Kalar, south of the Kurdish Iraqi city of Sulaymaniyah, news reports said.
Garmyane was the editor-in-chief of the news website Rayel and a correspondent for the Kurdish-language newspaper Awene. Garmyane had published several reports alleging corruption among Kurdish politicians, especially of those within the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) party, according to the Sulaymaniyah-based press freedom group Metro Center for Journalist Rights and Advocacy.
News reports said that three days prior to his death Garmyane posted on his Facebook page that he planned to publish a new report on corruption.
Read more about Kawa Garmyane.
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Iraq is #2 on CPJ’s 2015 Impunity Index, which calculates the number of unsolved journalist murders as a percentage of each country’s population. This month CPJ is highlighting cases from each of the 14 countries on the list ahead of the International Day to End Impunity on November 2.
Iraq
For the first time since CPJ compiled the Impunity Index, Iraq is not ranked as the worldwide worst offender. Its numbers of unsolved murders remain staggering-84 journalists have been slain with complete impunity over the last decade, far more than any other country-but lethal anti-press violence, while still frequent, has fallen from its height in 2006 and 2007 when a combined total of 55 journalists were murdered. Dozens of attacks ranging from abductions to murder are believed to have taken place in territories controlled by Islamic State militants, but the group’s tight control of information has prevented CPJ from confirming most of these attacks and including those victims on this list, a fact that belies Iraq’s ostensible improvement. Only one case in Iraq has met with any level of justice, and it took place in the autonomous Kurdistan region. In October 2014, a criminal court sentenced a suspect to death for the 2013 killing of Kawa Garmyane, editor-in-chief of a monthly magazine in Kurdistan. While the conviction, the first in Iraq, is a major leap forward in the fight against impunity, the case was set back in January this year when the same court acquitted the military commander charged with ordering the assassination.
IMPUNITY INDEX RATING: 2.414 unsolved journalist murders per million inhabitants
LAST YEAR: Ranked 1st with a rating of 3.067