Every year Reporters Without Borders produce a World Press Freedom Index, looking at how 180 countries rate on press freedom and the degree to which journalists and bloggers are targetted by militias, criminal gangs and the armed far right (both fascists and extreme Islamists). It is a window on how dangerous and unfree the world is.
The 2014 Index highlights the effects of the Syrian crisis. 130 journalists were killed between 2011 and the end of 2013; more since then have been killed, arrested or intimidated by Bashar Al Assad, ISIS and Kurdish PYD militia.
In the last two years there has been an escalation in the US, Europe and elsewhere of “national security” legislation, surveillance and interference in the press. Dozens of journalists have been jailed in Turkey.
Reaction against the possibility of an “Arab spring” continues to influence attitudes to the media in the Arabian peninsula, where there has been a relentless crackdown on internet, blogging and information sharing.
In May 2013 Raif Badawi, a liberal blogger, was sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes in Saudi Arabia. Last week he was received the first 50 of those lashes in a public display. The same government which imprisoned Badawi for speaking his mind also condemned the attack on Charlie Hebdo as “cowardly”.
Non-state groups are the biggest source of physical danger to journalists.
Al Qaeda, Al-Shabaab, M23 (Congo), ISIS all use lethal violence against journalists, targetting them as obstacles to gaining territorial control.
Organised crime kills journalists in Latin America, Pakistan, China and the Balkans.
The best place in the world to be a journalist? Finland and the Netherlands. The worst place? Eritrea and North Korea. And there is every kind of threat and danger everywhere else.
• Sri Lanka: At Tamil-language daily Uthayan six employees have been killed in anti-Tamil attacks in recent years.
• Mexico: 88 journalists killed between 2000 and 2013 by criminal organisations.
• Russia: defamation criminalised, websites blacklisted. “Traditional values” are used to justify new restrictions on freedom of information, including the criminalisation of “homosexual propaganda” and “insulting the feelings of believers.”
• Uzbekistan: campaigning journalists and netizens in jail.
• Indian sub-continent: biggest rise in violence, eight killed in India, seven in Pakistan during 2013. Journalists under threat from criminal organisations, security forces, and armed groups.
In Bangladesh bloggers covering the trials of former political leaders accused of war crimes during the 1971 independence war were physically attacked or killed.
