WP,pg1: Press in Iraq Gains Rights But No Refuge: 85 Killed in 2 Years

[DeepModem Mom]

Press in Iraq Gains Rights But No Refuge
85 Workers Killed in 2 Years

By Jonathan Finer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, June 6, 2005; Page A01


....Iraq is adjusting uneasily to its newfound press freedoms, which proponents consider as important to cultivating democracy here as free and fair elections. At least 85 journalists and other employees of news organizations -- the vast majority of them Iraqis -- have been killed here since March 2003, according to the International Federation of Journalists, which opened an office in Baghdad in April to distribute safety information.

More recent incidents have been particularly alarming. Five journalists were killed over a four-day period in April, including Ahmed Rubaie, a reporter for Baghdad's al-Sabah newspaper who was kidnapped and reportedly beheaded. Later that month, a pair of columnists in Wasit, southeast of Baghdad, were sentenced to prison by a criminal court after they wrote stories critical of the provincial government and police, according to the Iraqi Association to Defend Journalists, an advocacy group that also is looking into several recent allegations of intimidation by the Iraqi government and police.

And May 16, on a highway south of Baghdad, insurgents stopped a minibus with 13 passengers aboard, three of whom carried press passes, according to Samir Adili of the Iraqi National Journalism Panel, a newly formed advocacy group. The three journalists were shot dead, he said.

"At the moment, things in Iraq are about as bad as it gets for journalists, and it is hardest for Iraqi journalists," said Robert Shaw, human rights and information officer for the International Federation of Journalists. "When Western media send their people in, they look seriously at questions of insurance, training for hazardous conditions and specialized equipment. But very few Iraqi reporters have these protections. And when they die, families get nothing because their employers don't have sufficient resources."...


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/05/AR2005060501143.html?sub=AR

[donsu]

1. 85 is a horrible number

you would think the world's press would be angry and screaming from the rooftops, via, print, TV, internet.

[Roland99]

2. That's almost as many British soldiers have been killed

Good grief!!

[DeepModem Mom]

3. A telling point, Roland -- and these people, of course...

are noncombatants, as are the many Iraqi civilians killed who are not among the press.