The organization Reporters Without Borders said yesterday that, despite 17 journalists having died in the conflict between Israel and Hamas, the number of reporters killed while carrying out their duties in 2023 is the lowest since 2002.
In 2023, 45 journalists died while carrying out their duties, compared to 61 last year, indicates the annual report by the non-governmental organization (NGO) RSF.
You have to go back more than two decades to find a lower total than this year – 33 in 2002 – in which more than a third of the losses are linked to the conflict in the Middle East, including 13 in Gaza alone.
“This does not diminish the drama of Gaza in any way, but there is a steady decline, a far cry from the more than 140 journalists killed in 2012 and again in 2013,” mainly as a result of the wars in Syria and Iraq, he explained to the news agency. news France-Presse (AFP) the secretary general of RSF, Christophe Deloire.
The organization lists a total of “63 journalists killed” in the Middle East since the start of the conflict between Israel and Hamas, on October 7th, regardless of whether they were linked to the profession or not.
In addition to the 13 journalists killed “by Israeli fire” in Gaza, this war caused the death of three journalists working in Lebanon and another in Israel, killed by the Islamist movement Hamas, the NGO added.
In November, RSF filed a complaint with the International Criminal Court for “war crimes” committed against journalists in Gaza and against the Israeli journalist.
An AFP investigation published last week into the bombing in South Lebanon on 13 October that killed Archyde.com news agency video journalist Issam Abdallah and injured six people, including AFP photographer Christina Assi, seriously injured, points at a projectile from an Israeli tank.
A spokesman for the Israeli army stressed that the place where the journalists were located was “an active combat zone”. These explanations are unsatisfactory, noted Christophe Deloire, who estimated that there is “a lot of evidence for Israel to assume its responsibilities”.
The conflict in Ukraine caused the deaths of two journalists in 2023, including AFP reporter Arman Soldin, “the only journalist killed in a country other than his own” this year, for a total of 11 since the Russian invasion in February 2022.
The 2023 global balance stands out for the “significant decrease” in deaths in Latin America, with six journalists killed, compared to 26 in 2022.
Mexico, the deadliest area for the profession, after Gaza, recorded four journalists killed in 2023, compared to 11 in the previous year. But this does not mean that security is improving for the press, “as demonstrated by the three abductions of reporters and the armed attacks against four journalists in late 2023,” the report noted.
The number of journalists detained around the world increased to 521, compared to 569 in 2022, with Belarus becoming “one of the three largest prisons in the world, along with China and Myanmar”, the document also said.