WASHINGTON, June 4, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Twenty-two journalists killed in 2018
had their names added to a Washington memorial Monday as media rights
defenders warned of growing threats to freedom of the press around the world.
Among the names added to the Journalist Memorial at the Newseum were Jamal
Khashoggi, the exiled Saudi dissident killed in Turkey, and AFP photographer
Shah Marai, among 25 people killed in a Kabul bomb attack in April 2018.
“The memorial and this annual rededication event remind us all every day
that the world is an increasingly dangerous place for those who gather and
report the news,” said Gene Policinski, president and chief operating officer
of the Freedom Forum Institute.
The peril for journalists, he noted, can come just as much from “the
inherent dangers of reporting from the battlefield or the storm front” as
“from being targeted by criminals, terrorists or repressive governments.”
Columnist Fred Hiatt of The Washington Post, where Khashoggi was a
contributor, stressed the need to seek justice for his slain colleague.
“If he can be murdered with impunity no journalist is safe,” Hiatt told the
ceremony. “If the crime can be committed inside a diplomatic mission… then
no location is safe.”
Khashoggi, a royal insider, was killed and dismembered in the Saudi
consulate in Istanbul in what Riyadh said was a “rogue” operation, but the
CIA has reportedly said the murder was likely ordered by Crown Prince
Mohammed bin Salman.
The memorial now carries the names of 2,344 journalists killed since 1837,
just a fraction of those who have lost their lives gathering and delivering
news — an estimated 54 last year alone.
“This ceremony and the memorial represents the opportunity to remember what
happens with them and the opportunity to not forget,” said Yadira Aguagallo,
the partner of Paul Rivas, a photographer for Ecuador’s El Comercio killed
last year along with journalist Javier Ortega and their driver Efrain
Segarra.
The team were captured and killed by former Colombian rebels during a
reporting assignment on drug trafficking on the border between the two
countries.
Others whose names were added included Mike McCormick and Philip Aaron
Smeltzer, members of a television crew killed reporting on a tropical storm
in South Carolina.
“It means that Mike and Phil aren’t forgotten,” said Mandy Nottingham, a
former colleague of the pair at WYFF television.
“Their work continues because we don’t let it die with them.”