Since early July, the International Press Institute’s Death Watch added the names of 13 journalists to its total of 37 whose work in Syria cost them their lives this year. With IPI counting 93 deaths so far this year, the year is shaping up to be the deadliest for journalists since IPI started keeping records in 1997.
Last year was the second-grimmest as counted by IPI, with 102 journalists killed. The worst year was 2009, with 110 deaths – 31 of them in a single assault in the Philippines where 26 civilians also died in an ambush of an election convoy. Like too many other murders of journalists there has not yet been justice in the Philippines massacre, with BBC reporting in June the murder of the sixth person among witnesses, potential witnesses or their relatives killed since the case went to court in 2010.
The Syrian government heavily restricts reporting and issues few visas to journalists. Many report from Syria by slipping over the border, as did Austin Tice, a freelance journalist from Texas and a former Marine, who has not been heard from since August 12. Tice, 31, had reported from Syria for The Washington Post, McClatchy Newspapers, CBS News, al-Jazeera English and Agence France-Presse and before his disappearance had recently spent time with rebel fighters. He was expected to return to the United States in mid-August.
The Committee to Protect Journalists also finds Syria the deadliest country for journalists but it counts 16 deaths there so far this year. CPJ lists a death only if it confirms a journalist was “murdered in direct reprisal for his or her work; was killed in crossfire during combat situations; or was killed while carrying out a dangerous assignment such as coverage of a street protest,” but INI also includes journalists who died because of an accident while on assignment. For example, INI includes but CPJ does not the death of Anthony Shadid, an OPC member who had slipped over the border to Syria and died there Feb. 16 apparently of a severe asthma attack while on assignment for The New York Times.
Since the beginning of July, the IPI reported:
- Freelance photographer Mahmoud Hamdo Hallaq was killed by shrapnel during shelling in Aleppo on July 2.
- Citizen journalist and photographer Alaa Umar Jumaa was killed in the Kansaba region on the Turkish/Syrian border by a mortar shell July 4.
- Ihsan al Buni, a photographer for the Al Thawra daily was reportedly assassinated July 12 by an armed terrorist group in Damascus on his way to work.
- Iraqi journalists Ali Juburi al-Kaabi, editor of Iraqi newspaper Al Roaa, and Falah Taha, a photojournalist for that paper, killed in separate incidents July 18 while covering clashes between the Syrian regime and rebels in Damascus.
- Mohamed al-Husni, a cameraman and director of a media center in Homs, died of shrapnel injuries July 19 after a bomb blast in Homs.
- Mahmoud Sudqi Sekheta, a citizen journalist and reporter for the Edlib news network, was tortured to death after being arrested by army forces. His dumped body, identified by clothes and blood samples, was buried in the province of Idlib on July 22.
- Mohammed Al-Saeed, a presenter on Syrian state television, was abducted from his home on July 19 and later killed. On August 3, an online posting reportedly from the Al Nusra Front, an Islamist militant group opposing the Syrian government, said Al-Saeed was interrogated and killed.
- Ali Abbas, head of the Internal News Department of the Syrian Arab News Agency, was reported by his employer to be killed August 11 by members of an “armed terrorist group” at his home in Damascus.
- Bara’a Yusuf al-Bushi of the pan-Arab satellite news channel Al Arabiya, was killed while on assignment in a bomb attack in Damascus, on August 11. Al-Bushi, a Syrian national and army defector, also worked with other international news agencies.
- Mika Yamamoto, a Japanese reporter and veteran war correspondent, was killed on August 20, in Aleppo. She had covered the 2001 conflict in Afghanistan and the 2003 conflict in Iraq and was working for the Japan Press, an independent TV news provider that specializes in conflict zone coverage. Kazutaka Sato, her husband who was with her at the time of her death, told Japanese media that they were with anti-regime forces when they were shot at by what appeared to be government soldiers.
- Media activist Omar Hamed al-Zanil was killed August 22 by shelling in Damascus.
- Hatem Abu Yehya, a cameraman for the pro-government Al Ikhbariya TV channel, was killed when opposition forces abducted him and his colleagues on August 10. Three others were freed two days later.
Many journalists have also been wounded in the continuing conflict.