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Journalists' sacrifices remembered

Commentary

By Charles L. Overby
Chairman and CEO, The Freedom Forum

05.15.99

It's hard to believe that 29 journalists were killed in 1998 while simply doing their jobs.

They will be memorialized this month with the rededication of The Freedom Forum Journalists Memorial.

After the ceremony, there will be 1,035 names on the memorial. This beautiful glass structure in Arlington, Va., attracts thousands of visitors who leave with a greater appreciation of the perils facing journalists.

'Assassination of journalists is on the rise,' said Tim Kenny, who oversees this ongoing project for The Freedom Forum.

Most of these deaths are related to journalists investigating corruption or writing critically about politics.

'It's rare that those cases get solved,' Kenny said. 'They are not taken seriously.'

Consider just a few examples:

• Oscar Garcia Calderon was shot three times in the head after covering a bullfight in Bogota, Colombia. He was investigating possible links between bullfighting and organized crime.
• Luis Mario Garcia Rodriguez was shot nine times while leaving the offices of the attorney general in Mexico. He had been writing about police corruption.
• Tara Singh Hayer was shot to death in Surrey, British Columbia, after writing critical articles frequently about violent Sikh fundamentalists. Hayer had been using a wheelchair since 1988, when he was shot by a Sikh militant.

Not all journalists who died in 1998 were murdered. Four journalists in Kenya died in a plane crash while on assignment. A journalist drowned in Florida while covering a story about a fishing-net ban.

Either way, the murders and accidents underscore the danger of pursuing news.

Wars, of course, always place journalists in jeopardy.

The armed conflicts in the Balkans in the 1990s are second only to those in Southeast Asia in the number of journalists killed. This is the toll by wars:

• Southeast Asia: 68 (Vietnam, 31; Cambodia, 33; Laos, 4).
• Yugoslavia: 57 (Bosnia, 26; Croatia, 29; Slovenia, 2).
• World War II: 47
• Korea: 10
• World War I: 1

More journalists have been killed in the United States than in any other country, based on the number of names on the memorial.

We know that more journalists probably have been killed in other countries, but there is no documentation to prove it.

'Who knows how many journalists Stalin killed?' Kenny said.

Here are the five countries where the most journalists have been killed:

• United States, 84
• Philippines, 70
• Algeria, 64
• Guatemala, 54
• India, 50

Print journalists make up the majority of names on the memorial, but on-the-job deaths of photographers and TV camera people are increasing as they put themselves on the front lines of conflicts around the world.

Kenny, along with Alice Bishop, works year-round gathering the names of journalists killed and documenting the circumstances surrounding their deaths.

They work closely with the Committee to Protect Journalists, the organization that has been doing similar research since 1981.

The Freedom Forum has attempted to document deaths that occurred since the early 1800s. Since we dedicated the memorial in 1996, we have discovered and documented 193 additional journalists who died in the line of duty. Those journalists escaped our original research.

The 193 names will be added to the memorial during a ceremony in May of 2000.

We built the memorial with lots of blank glass. Unfortunately, the glass is filling up with names.

Sadly, we know that about 30 journalists pursuing the truth today will be killed by this time next year.

We should never forget these journalists who have sacrificed their lives.