Fighting for your rights

'Deliberate and pre-meditated killings of journalists are rare, but, however rare, are still too frequent.'

With a few notable exceptions, present day wars are no longer traditional conflicts. The whole nature and practice of warfare has undergone a profound change in the years since the Second World War. The role of the reporter has had to change too - a change dictated not only by the conflict in hand, but also by the revolution in media technology.

Most wars today are 'low intensity' conflicts characterised by a disregard for normal laws, an absence of any recognised code of conduct, a permanent excess of violence, useless and arbitrary murders and, underscoring it all, a climate of exaggerated nationalistic fervour. Reporters covering these conflicts are exposed to increasingly diverse dangers.

More journalists will have been killed in the Balkan conflict than in any war of comparable length - at least forty five, including many freelancers, most of them in Sarajevo.

It is worth remembering that most of the journalists who have died in the former Yugoslavia, were killed indirectly by either shelling or mines, while those in Sarajevo were mainly the victims of indiscriminate snipers. Deliberate and pre-meditated killings of journalists are rare but, however rare, are still too frequent.

In Chechnya at least 10 journalists have died since December 1994. In Algeria nearly 60 have been murdered, often brutally, by fanatical Islamic groups. But it isn't just bullets on the battlefield that the press faces.

An example of the attack on the basic freedoms of journalists and the media is to be found in Cuba where even typewriters have to be declared. No dissident bulletins can be disseminated, and the Cuban equivalent of the Russian samizsdat publications of the 1970s have yet to see the light of day. Possessing a fax or photocopier can lead to imprisonment. In fact two journalists are currently incarcerated in Fidel Castro's prisons.

Unfortunately absurdities such as these are not the sole preserve of the Cuban regime. For many journalists, to speak of the torture taking place in Algeria, or of the Kurds in Turkey, or the absence of freedom in China, is to end up rotting in jail while their words and film are consigned to the censors' bin. Close to half of the 185 states sitting at the United Nations today, openly flout press freedoms. Nearly one hundred journalists have paid the price of reporting with their liberty, if not their lives.

Reporters Sans Frontiers defends the media's right to inform and to be informed and its right to expose these assaults on press freedom. It urges international organisations and governments, with reference to article 19 of the International Pact on Civil and Political Rights, to free imprisoned journalists, to end censorship and the confiscation of film and text. It urges them to fight restrictive laws and to adopt treaties and conventions guaranteeing press freedom.

On a practical level Reporters Sans Frontiers gives legal assistance to imprisoned journalists, and medical and humanitarian aid to the victims of violence. As far as possible, the organisation provides material help to independent press bodies which find themselves up against the repression of public authorities, or the violence of armed groups.

Too often the task of exposing violations of freedom of expression falls to organisations committed to the defence of human rights, and is seldom reported by the media. This is unsatisfactory, and it should become the task of every individual to help fight the arbitrary and oppose the unacceptable, step by step. It is intolerable that journalists should be persecuted over a difference of opinion.

'There are no free elections without a free press,' was the message of anti-Milosevic demonstrators in Belgrade in 1996. Let us not forget this.

The crucial struggle to support the freelance community is not the work of any one organisation and, as a new committee member, Reporters Sans Frontiers is proud to be associated with the work of the Rory Peck Trust.

We look forward to a long and fruitful collaboration.

Robert Menard, secretary general of Reporters Sans Frontiers