While commemorating the 23rd anniversary of World Press Freedom Day, organized by the United Nations (UN) on May 3, General Assembly President Sam Kutesa paid glowing tributes to those “courageous men and women who brave hazardous terrain and dangerous environments to tell important stories the world needs to hear.”
At a time when press has become a hot target, for killings and kidnappings, like never before, Kutesa rightly urged “all UN member states to do their utmost to uphold the rights — to disseminate information independently — for the press and media staff.” Kutesa’s clarion call for fiercely protecting media freedom comes days after Associated Press chief Gary Pruitt’s impassioned plea, to make “killings and kidnapping of journalists a war crime” received widespread support. Even Kahraman Haliscelik, first vice-president of UN Correspondents Association, reiterated the need for UN Security Council (UNSC) action on protection of journalists in conflict zone.
Indeed, these are trying times for the fourth estate. This year alone, more than 40 journalists and media staff were killed in the line of duty worldwide, with many more being held hostage apart from a number of recorded disappearance. There is no denying that journalists are being killed or incarcerated more than ever before despite the fact that UNSC Resolution 1738, adopted in 2006, unambiguously calls for protection of journalists, media professionals and associated personnel in armed conflict situations. The resolution also demands that all governments across the globe prosecute those responsible for serious violations of international humanitarian law and simultaneously urged all parties to respect the professional independence and rights of journalists. Yet, the scribes have unfortunately turned into high-profile tools of terror propaganda by way of kidnappings or brutal beheadings on camera — all to highlight the supposedly “just cause” of the terrorists. As Pruitt rightly observed, “most perniciously, journalists are finding themselves in a sickening situation where terrorists are killing them not to stop a story, but to create one.”
With global media-casualty statistics (more than 1,000 dead since 1992) shooting up like anything, one wonder whether updating the international legal framework — concerning war crimes — will have any realistic effect on the ground as regards to safety of media correspondents in high-risk zones? In fact, the very nature of conflict coverage is such that journalists are hardly seen as impartial civilians reporting from the front line for the benefit of their readers or viewers despite the autonomy and greater protection that international war statutes provide. Since long, they have generally been counted as full participants, and often as enemy spies, who deserved the same treatment that a uniformed combatant gets during wartime.
In the heat of the moment during a conflict, when there is death on all sides, combatants never play by rules. And in today’s asymmetric warfare, can we really expect a brainwashed non-state actor to observe the sanctity of the laws of armed conflict, which stipulate that journalists are allowed to play a unique and essential role? Yes, the spirit and letter of international humanitarian statute does mandate every nation to ensure that when accredited journalists goes to the conflict zone embedded, they must not become specific targets in spite of being a legal part of the military entourage. This has been the normal practice since 19th century and the provision to provide captured correspondents “prisoners of war” status still exists in the statute book.
The 1949 Geneva Conventions equates war correspondents with civilian members of military aircraft crews and other non-uniformed, albeit integral participants in the greater military enterprise. Unless, there is any evidence of atrocities being committed outside their roles as war correspondents, journalists are not supposed to be prosecuted or treated as spies. But today, when the nature of armed conflict has undergone sea changes, the clauses of Geneva Conventions, its additional protocols and the customary international humanitarian law that seek to provide journalists with necessary rights and protections have become redundant. Is it not a fact that it is much more frightening to be held hostage by ragtag guerrilla army or a renegade totalitarian regime in modern time than an organized military force of the world wars or even the Cold War? But a strategic intelligence official (SIO) told this author that “experience of the Cold War has shaped today’s guerrilla warfare modus operandi.” Indeed, during the Cold War era, a vast number of journalists secretly carried out assignments for various spy agencies. From simple information gathering to serving as go-betweens with spies in enemy territories, media people provided a full range of clandestine services to their respective national intelligence.
And “this tacit relationship between journalists and agencies engaged in espionage was not confined to the two principal Cold War protagonists, but was widespread in those days,” asserted the SIO who participated in several joint strategic undercover missions on India’s behalf during those turbulent times. He goes on to add that even “fulltime intelligence officials masqueraded as journalists abroad and operated without exposure for years.”
Since the handlers of today’s innumerable “Terror Frankenstein” are mostly Cold War veterans, to become apprehensive of journalists is a natural instinct for them, the SIO observed candidly. May be, a press-card holder acting as an intelligence-informer might turn everybody with such credential into a suspect, but does that justify indiscriminate execution? A journalist reports from the trenches, not because of any ideological obligation or love for violence, but for the commitment to seek truth and communicate it to the masses unpolished. So when a scribe is targeted, truth becomes the casualty.
