128 journalists have lost their their lives reporting from conflict zones in the period January 2022 to November 2023. The geographic spread is anything but slim. The NUJ report that journalists have died in Haiti, Kazakhstan, Myanmar, Mexico, India, Brazil, Chad, Turkey, Central African Republic, Ukraine, Guatemala, Philippines, Bangladesh, Israel & the occupied Palestinian Territory, Chile, Honduras, Yemen, Ecuador, USA, Paraguay, Somalia, Colombia, Kenya, Syria, Cameroon, Rwanda, Afghanistan, Albania, Lesotho and Lebanon. Countries we would know much less about were journalists not prepared to take the risks so necessary to maintain an informed world.
My bus into Dublin fell behind schedule so proceedings were under way by the time I arrived but I did manage to hear Mary Curtin read Seamus Heaney’s poem “From the Republic of Conscience.”A number of her colleagues then read out a list of names at the end of which they placed a red carnation on the ground. Siobhan Holliman, Neil Ward, Ronan Brady, Judy Murphy, Anton McCabe, Gerry Curran, Kitty Holland, Damien Tiernan, Emma O’Kelly, Fran McNulty, Ian McGuinness, Reza Nuri, Norma Prendiville and Michael Foley all stepped up to the microphone. A microphone is a vital tool of the trade through which journalists amplify the news that others do not want heard. On this occasion it was used to speak of those who would never speak into one again.
The pipes of Noel Pocock filled the air with a dirge for the dead, each note a salute to the motionless 128 pens.
We hear about journalists dying, but insufficiently join the dots to see a pattern, allowing for a tendency to take hold that their deaths are isolated incidents of bad fortune that do not accumulate to the scale that was made evident at the vigil. I commented to NUJ Irish Secretary Seamus Dooley as we were leaving that the vigil was a wake up call. Journalists are an endangered species in an increasingly dangerous world.
He, in a grim warning, stated that the list of the dead “would inevitably be out of date and may even have been overtaken by horrific events in Gaza.”
In a firm abjuration of the murderous attempts to silence journalists he told those who had assembled:
In a firm abjuration of the murderous attempts to silence journalists he told those who had assembled:
We gather today in sorrow. We gather to mourn our dead with dignity but let that dignity not be mistaken for lack of anger. The scandalous contempt for the rights of journalists under the Geneva Conventions and Protocols by the Israeli government cannot be justified by the vile actions of Hamas. We mourn the loss of life in Israel and Palestine. The blood of journalists is no different to the blood of the other men, women and children who have been slain in this horrific war.
As a union of journalists, we want to highlight the attempt to silence journalists and journalism, to close down media outlets and to prevent the story of the ongoing assault on human rights being told by independent journalists working in horrendous conditions.
While at the commemoration my daughter, having just finished work, joined me. She might have been the youngest person there. It caused me to reflect on the extent to which young people grasp the essential function journalism performs. I am not sure that many of her generation know that journalism scales great heights by virtue of having to make the climb, gravestone upon gravestone of murdered colleagues.
And then today the news from Gaza via the Committee To Protect Journalists which fulfilled the ominous prophecy of Seamus Dooley: 53 journalists and media workers killed to date. The Israeli policy of muzzling journalists at home is mirrored by murdering them in the Occupied Territories. The Israeli war on hospitals, the war on children is now a war on journalists.
And our heads will bow mournfully again.
 |
| ⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre. |
No comments