Two UN human rights experts on Thursday urged greater protection for media professionals, citing the unacceptably high number of attacks against those disseminating news, including arbitrary arrests, torture and killings, to violence against female journalists.
"Attacks against journalists are attacks against democracy," stressed the Special Rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression, Frank La Rue, and the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Christof Heyns, in a joint statement. Presenting their respective reports to the UN Human Rights Council in
Geneva, the experts urged governments, the international community, as well as journalists and media organisations, to act decisively to protect the lives of journalists and media freedom. La Rue cited in particular "the continuing repression of journalists and media freedom world-wide, aimed at suppressing information deemed 'inconvenient,' and increasing restrictions placed on journalists who disseminate information through the Internet."
"States continue to utilise criminal laws on defamation, national security and counterterrorism to suppress dissent and criticism, including on Government policies, human rights violations and allegations of corruption," he noted, adding that, such judicial harassment generates a climate of fear and encourages self-censorship. "Heyns underscored that impunity is a major, if not the main, cause of the high number of journalists killed every year. The countries where the highest numbers of journalists are killed are also, almost without exception, those with the highest levels of impunity," he said.