Committee to Protect Journalists

Impunity Spotlight: Somalia

Abdirizak Ali Abdi,Freelance

November 16, 2014, in Galkayo, Puntland, Somalia

Two unknown, hooded gunmen shot Abdirisak Ali Abdi in the head and chest while he was sitting in a restaurant in the northern suburb of Galkayo town, according to news reports and the director of Daljir Radio, Mohamed Abdulahi, who spoke to CPJ. The two gunmen fled the scene before police arrived. Abdirisak died while receiving treatment for his injuries at Mudug General Hospital, the same sources said.

Somalia

Not one year has passed over the last decade without a journalist being murdered in civil war-wracked Somalia, which first appeared on the index in 2008. At least 30 journalists have been murdered without any consequence for the perpetrators in this index period, the majority targeted by Al-Shabaab militants who for years have threatened and assaulted journalists in relation to their coverage of the group’s activities. While the government has pinned its impunity problem on the political instability and shortage of resources inflicted by 20 years of civil war, journalists say authorities fail to conduct even minimal investigations when journalists are killed. In April, unidentified armed men broke into the home of Daud Ali Omar at night and killed him and his wife while they were sleeping. Daud was a producer for a privately owned, pro-government radio station, and local journalists and police said they suspected Al-Shabaab was responsible.

IMPUNITY INDEX RATING: 2.857 unsolved journalist murders per million inhabitants

LAST YEAR: Ranked 2nd with a rating of 2.549

Impunity Spotlight: Afghanistan

Ajmal Naqshbandi, freelance

April 8, 2007, in Helmand province, Afghanistan

Taliban fighters beheaded reporter Ajmal Naqshbandi in the Garmsir district of Helmand province after the Afghan government refused demands to free jailed Taliban leaders in exchange for the journalist’s release.

Naqshbandi was abducted on March 4 with La Repubblica reporter Daniele Mastrogiacomo and the group’s driver, Sayed Agha, in Helmand province. Agha was slain a few days after the abduction, while the Italian Mastrogiacomo was released March 19 in exchange for five Taliban prisoners.

Afghanistan

No perpetrators have been held responsible in any of the five targeted killings that took place in Afghanistan in the decade covered by this year’s index. Cases include Zakia Zaki, shot seven times in 2007 by gunmen who stormed her home. Zaki had received warnings she should shut down the independent radio station she directed, which covered human rights and local politics. Foreign journalists have also been frequent targets in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, following elections last year that brought in the administration of President Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai, Afghanistan’s first vice-president, Abdul Rashid Dostum, marked the first International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists by meeting with journalists and promising support for the media, according to news reports. He also included a warning, however, for journalists who desecrate religion: “I will strangle such a person myself.”

IMPUNITY INDEX RATING: 0.158 unsolved journalist murders per million inhabitants

LAST YEAR: Ranked 6th with a rating of 0.168

Impunity Spotlight: Mexico

Rubén Espinosa Becerril, Proceso,AVC Noticias, Cuartoscuro

July 31, 2015, in Mexico City, Mexico

Espinosa was found in an apartment with four female victims, and all of them had been shot in the head, authorities said on August 2. One of the victims, Nadia Vera, was a friend of Espinosa’s and a student activist in Xalapa, the Veracruz online publication Plumas Libresreported.

Espinosa fled Veracruz state and arrived in Mexico City in June 2015, he told CPJ in an interview that month. He worked for the local news agency AVC Noticias, the national newsweekly Proceso, and photo agency Cuartoscuro and often covered local activist causes, local journalists told CPJ.

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Mexico is #8 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.

Mexico

Mexico’s impunity rating has more than doubled since it first appeared on the index in 2008. Nineteen journalists covering crime and corruption were murderedwith complete impunity over the last decade. In 2013, Mexico introducedlegislation to enable federal authorities in Mexico to prosecute crimes against journalists, but the measure has failed to yield prosecutions, disappointing journalists and freedom of expression advocates. Since its passage, six more journalists have been murdered with impunity. In a chilling development this July, Mexican photographer Rubén Espinosa was tortured and murdered in Mexico City, previously considered a safe haven for journalists facing threats in Veracruz and other cartel-dominated states. Following the murder, more than 700 writers signed a letter to President Enrique Peña Nieto calling for the full investigation into crimes against journalists. “Organized crime, corrupt government officials, and a justice system incapable of prosecuting criminals all contribute to reporters’ extreme vulnerability,” read the letter, which CPJ supported.

IMPUNITY INDEX RATING: 0.152 unsolved journalist murders per million inhabitants

LAST YEAR: Ranked 7th with a rating of 0.132

Impunity Spotlight: Pakistan

Shan Dahar, Abb Takk Television

January 1, 2014, in Larkana, Pakistan

Dahar, a reporter for Abb Takk Television, was shot in the back while filming outside a pharmacy near the Badah Press Club in Larkana, according to his sister and brother-in-law who spoke to CPJ. He died shortly after at a local hospital.

Initial media reports suggested that Dahar was hit by a stray bullet as weapons were being fired into the air during New Year celebrations, but in the days that followed, journalists and local media support groups suggested this was an intentional killing.

Pakistan

Hopes that last year’s conviction of six suspects for the assassination of television reporter Wali Khan Babar would herald a new dawn for journalists have dwindled in the face of fresh violence and the leadership’s failure to implement a series of commitments to CPJ to address impunity. Three journalists have been slain since the last index period, bringing Pakistan’s total to 22 for the most recent decade. They include Shan Dahar who was gunned down while investigating illegal sales of aid medicine at a local hospital. With the exception of Babar’s case, impunity remains the norm in these murders and in a slew of recent, non-fatal attacks, such as the shooting that gravely injured popular news anchor Hamid Mir. Threats to journalists stream from military and intelligence agencies, political parties, criminal groups and militants, and corrupt local leaders. Pakistan is a focuscountry for the UN Plan of Action for the Safety of Journalists and Issue of Impunity, an initiative that has improved dialogue and coordinationamong civil society, media, and the government but not yet led to any significant reduction in impunity.

IMPUNITY INDEX RATING: 0.119 unsolved journalist murders per million inhabitants

LAST YEAR: Ranked 9th with a rating of 0.123

Impunity Spotlight: RUSSIA

Mikhail Beketov, Khimkinskaya Pravda

April 8, 2013, in Khimki, Russia

Mikhail Beketov, 55, the former editor of the independent newspaper Khimkinskaya Pravda in the Moscow suburb of Khimki, died in a Moscow hospital from heart failure stemming from a choking episode during lunch, Elena Kostyuchenko, Beketov’s friend and a reporter for the newspaper Novaya Gazeta, told CPJ by phone.

The choking incident was directly related to a November 2008 assault on Beketov, which left him in a coma for several months, according to Kostyuchenko and news reports. When he was in the coma, surgeons maintained his breathing by inserting a tube during a tracheotomy. Kostyuchenko said the combination of the deep tracheal scars and the food led to him choking, which blocked airflow to his lungs and in turn led to heart failure.

In November 2008, neighbors had found Beketov lying in his front yard in Khimki, more than 24 hours after unidentified assailants crushed his skull, broke his legs, smashed both hands, and left him to die in the cold. Physicians removed part of Beketov’s brain after the attack, and amputated a leg as well as some fingers, according to news reports. The journalist regularly visited the hospital for checkups.

Prior to the attack, Beketov had publicly accused Vladimir Strelchenko, then the mayor of Khimki, of nepotism and corruption and had heavily criticized his administration’s decision to replace parts of a local forest with a freeway.

Russia

The conviction in July of the mastermind behind the double murder of human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov and Novaya Gazeta reporter Anastasiya Baburova brought a glimmer of relief to a bleak record of impunity but, with 11 unsolved cases for this index period, Russia remains the worst country in Europe and Central Asia region at prosecuting journalists’ killers. Baburova’s case is unique; in nearly 90 percent of murders of journalists in Russia, no one is convicted. This fact stands in stark contrast to a statement by Investigative Committee chief Aleksandr Bastrykin in 2014 that 90 percent of all homicides in Russia are solved. The few prosecutions that have advanced, such as the high-profile case of Anna Politkovskaya, resulted so far in only the sentencing of those who carried out the crime-not those who ordered it. Other investigations havetapered off. Despite a personal promise by President Vladimir Putin to bring the attackers to justice, not a single person has been arrested for the assault on environmental journalist Mikhail Beketov, who succumbed in 2013 to injuries he sustained in 2008 when thugs bludgeoned him into a coma. CPJ has called for a re-investigation into the ultimately fatal beating.

IMPUNITY INDEX RATING: 0.076 unsolved journalist murders per million inhabitants

LAST YEAR: Ranked 10th with a rating of 0.098

Impunity Spotlight: BRAZIL

Rodrigo Neto, Rádio Vanguarda and Vale do Aço

March 8, 2013, in Ipatinga, Brazil

Two unidentified men on a motorcycle shot Neto as he was getting into his car after attending a local barbecue in Ipatinga, in the southeastern state of Minas Gerais, according to news reports. The journalist died at a local hospital.

Brazil

Despite a growing record of convictions, deadly violence against journalists continues to outpace justice in Brazil. With 11 unsolved cases, the country maintains the same worldwide impunity ranking as last year. In a meeting with a CPJ delegation in May 2014, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff pledged to pursue “zero impunity” and support legislative efforts to federalize crimes against free expression. Since then, suspects in the 2013 killings of crime reporters Rodrigo Neto and Walgney Assis de Carvalho have been convicted and sentenced. As with the majority of cases, however, accountability has extended as far as the gunmen but not the mastermind. Prosecuting those who order killings of journalists remains a key challenge to breaking Brazil’s cycle of violence, particularly when taking into consideration the fact that local government officials are the leading suspects in the majority of cases.

IMPUNITY INDEX RATING: 0.053 unsolved journalist murders per million inhabitants

LAST YEAR: Ranked 11th with a rating of 0.045

Impunity Spotlight: NIGERIA

Bayo Ohu, The Guardian

September 20, 2009, in Lagos, Nigeria

Ohu, 45, an assistant news editor for the influential private dailyThe Guardian, was shot by unidentified assailants as he answered a knock at the front door of his house in a northern suburb of Lagos. The six assailants took a laptop and cell phone, according to the journalist’s relatives and local news reports.

Ohu was preparing to head to church to meet his wife, and two of his five children were home at the time, local journalists told CPJ. Neighbors drove him to a local hospital, but staff refused to treat him because he was not accompanied by police, journalists and news reports said. He died before neighbors could get him to another hospital, local journalists told CPJ.

NIGERIA

With five unsolved murders, Nigeria holds a place on CPJ’s Impunity Index for the third year in a row. At least two journalists have been killed by individuals affiliated with Boko Haram, according to CPJ research, while others, like prominent news editor Bayo Ohu, were killed in connection with their reporting on local politics. Ohu was shot at his front door in 2009; in 2012, three suspects were acquitted of the crime after police failed to present any evidence. Nigeria has failed to respond to requests by the director-general of UNESCO, the U.N. agency mandated to promote press freedom, for the judicial status of this and several other journalist killings. In June 2015, CPJ wrote to then-President-elect Muhammadu Buhari asking him to depart from his predecessor, Goodluck Jonathan, by making the prosecution of killers of journalists a priority.

IMPUNITY INDEX RATING: 0.028 unsolved journalist murders per million inhabitants

LAST YEAR: Ranked 12th with a rating of 0.030