153 journalists killed in four years in Iraq - what if it were France ?

Almost four years to the day after the start of the war in Iraq in March 2003, Reporters Without Borders gathered 153 activists and volunteers at the Human Rights Square in Paris today to represent the 153 journalists and media assistants killed in Iraq since the start of the war. To help the public in France and abroad appreciate the plight of the media in Iraq, they brandished the portraits of 153 leading French journalists and unfurled a banner that said: “153 journalists killed in four years in Iraq - what if it were France?” Four years after the US-led invasion of Iraq, the toll of media deaths continues to mount. Iraq has become the world's most dangerous country for the press. Eighty-three per cent of the 153 journalists and media assistants killed there so far have been Iraqi nationals. No journalist is safe anywhere, whether in Baghdad or Kurdistan. They are most often murdered as they leave their home or office. According to Reporters Without Borders' Iraq correspondent, when a journalist fails to show up for work, his friends and colleagues immediately check the morgue. The victims include journalists from all sorts of news media but most of them are Iraqi public media employees, who are seen as working for a government identified with the United States. Others are targeted for working for news media linked with a particular religious group or political party. Abductions of journalists are on the increase. A total of 64 media workers have been kidnapped since March 2003. Seventeen of them were executed by their captors. There is no word on the fate of 11 others. In the 11 and a half months since Iraqi reporter Reem Zeid and her colleague Marwan Khazaal of Sumariya TV, a local station, were kidnapped on 1 February 2006, her abductors have never contacted her family or employer.