impunity-index

On September 15, a CPJ delegation released a special report in Moscow on impunity in journalist killings committed in Russia under the country’s current leadership. The report, Anatomy of Injustice, garnered an unusual amount of attention from the Russian media. Our press conference at the Independent Press Center was packed with journalists, both domestic and international; representatives from 20 news agencies, print and online publications, and radio and television outlets covered the release. The high attendance was a clear sign of the magnitude of the issue and the urgent need for it to be addressed.

Over the summer, as a book I’d written about the lives of murdered journalists went to press, a crusading human rights reporter from the Russian republic of Chechnya was shot dead. I was not surprised by the details of her murder, just as the Chechen reporter was not surprised she’d become a target for execution: Like all the journalists in my book, Natalya Estemirova had known she would probably be murdered.

The case had all the hallmarks of a sordid thriller. There was "a rogue politician, a journalist getting killed, a staunchly incurious police, and the media in frenzy," veteran journalist Lansana Gberie wrote in the New African, describing the fatal 2005 beating of editor Harry Yansaneh in Sierra Leone. 

When we launched CPJ's new Impunity Index today in Manila, the government of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo reacted viscerally. Just after we released the report, which prominently features the Philippines, Presidential Press Secretary Cerge Remonde sent out a statement to journalists by text message describing the report as "a bit of an exaggeration."

Today CPJ launched its 2009 Global Impunity Index in Manila to mark the fourth anniversary of the murder of Marlene Garcia-Esperat, left, a Philippine columnist who reported on corruption in the government's agriculture department. Garcia-Esperat was gunned down in her home in front of her family in a case that has become emblematic of the struggle against impunity. Two government officials are accused of ordering her murder. CPJ's Elisabeth Witchel interviewed Philippine attorney Nena Santos, a private prosecutor representing the Esperat children.

Combating impunity has been a long and difficult process, full of obstacles and problems. At the national level it has not been easy, so much of our work is carried out using the supranational tools that we helped develop. They began taking shape through international intergovernmental declarations, in conclusions reached by international legislative and judicial conferences and, especially, in opinions and decisions of the Inter-American Human Rights Court and Commission.

CPJ’s Impunity Index spotlights countries
where journalists are slain and killers go free

New York, March 23, 2009 -- The already murderous conditions for the press in Sri Lanka and Pakistan deteriorated further in the past year, the Committee to Protect Journalists has found in its newly updated Impunity Index, a list of countries where journalists are killed regularly and governments fail to solve the crimes. Colombia, historically one of the world’s deadliest nations for the press, improved as the rate of murders declined and prosecutors won important recent convictions.