Global Violence on Journalists

Journalists in Russia, Mexico, Sri Lanka, Kyrgyzstan and the Philippines are but some of the latest casualties in the media world.

Former journalist Natalya Estemirova, a human rights activist, was kidnapped by several men July 15 about 8:30 a.m. when she left her home for work in Grozny, the Chechnya capital. Her body was found nine hours later about 50 miles away on a roadside with two bullet wounds in her head. “She documented the most horrendous violations, mass executions,” said Tatyana Lokshina, a Moscow researcher with the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch.

Estemirova, 50, worked with journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was murdered in 2006, in uncovering human rights abuses in Chechnya. The next year, Estemirova won an award named for Politkovskaya. Single mother of a 15-year-old daughter, Estemirova stood out among human rights activists because she remained in her hometown in a two-room apartment still damaged in the Chechnya war that became a guest house for visiting journalists and human rights workers, New York Times correspondents Michael Schwirtz and Ellen Barry wrote.

Two Mexican journalists were killed within two days of each other. Martín Javier Miranda Avilés, a reporter on the daily Panorama and correspondent for the news agency Quadratin, was found dead at his home in Zitacuaro July 12 with two knife wounds in his back. On July 14, Ernesto Montañez Valdivia, an editor on the newspaper Enfoque del Sol de Chihuahua, was ambushed by armed men while driving his car and shot dead in Ciudad Juárez.  His 17-year-old son who was accompanying him was wounded in the neck. 

Poddala Jayantha at the hospital after being beaten.

Journalist Almaz Tashiyev died in a hospital in Nookat, his Kyrgystan hometown, July 12 after falling into a coma. His relatives said he was beaten by eight police officers July 4. But the authorities insist the fight was over a private matter. “That was a fight not related to Almaz Tashiyev’s professional activities,” Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs Sadyrbek Kurmanaliyev told a news conference. “On the road, [Tashiyev] met a friend, a police officer. However, there was a private quarrel between them. The officer was out of uniform.” Tashiyev, 32, was a social affairs reporter whose articles in the newspaper Agym often criticized the government’s performance.”

In Colombo Poddala Jayantha, general secretary of Sri Lanka’s Working Journalists Association who has campaigned against government restrictions on the media, was abducted, driven off in the type of van associated with clandestine government attacks and tortured by unknown assailants this spring. His left leg was shattered, his fingers broken and his right leg burned. In a letter to Sri Lanka President Mahinda Rajapaksa, Jeremy Main and Kevin McDermott of the OPC Freedom of the Press Committee quoting a National Public Radio report that 16 journalists were assassinated in Sri Lanka in the last decade.

Pakistan security forces fired on a car carrying two journalists from the Pashto TV channel AVT Khyber, a photographer from the daily Dawn and their driver June 9, wounding two of them, the Pakistan Press Foundation reported. They were on their way to cover events in Upper Dir, a volatile district in Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province. Wounded were TV cameraman Malik Irfin and driver Mohammed Mushtaq.

Vyacheslav Yaroshenko

Vyacheslav Yaroshenko, editor-in-chief of the independent newspaper Korruptsiya i Prestupnost (Corruption and Crime) published in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, died June 29 of head injuries suffered in the early morning of April 30. His deputy, Sergei Sleptsov, said Yaroshenko was attacked because his newspaper reported on alleged corruption involving Rostov law enforcement agencies. But police said he was injured in a fist fight and later said he was injured when he fell down the steps in the entrance to his apartment building. The editor was hospitalized with skull and brain trauma, spent five days in a coma and underwent surgery twice.

After finishing his broadcast on radio station DWDO in San Jose, Philippines on June 9, Crispin Perez, whose comments often angered local people, was fatally stabbed and shot by unknown attackers who escaped on a motorcycle. He was the third journalist killed in the Philippines this year, and a fourth died in police crossfire.