Mike Phipps reports on an important meeting highlighting a global offensive against one of our key democratic freedoms.

Sunday 2^nd November was the UN-designated International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists. To mark the occasion, the National Union of Journalists London Freelance Branch partnered with King’s College London Global Digital Cultures Research Group and King’s College London Universities and Colleges Union branch to hold a symposium.

Some 1,600 journalists have been killed in the last twenty years. Ninety percent of these cases have not been ‘solved’. Mexico alone accounts for a tenth of these fatalities. Additionally journalists are ‘disappeared’, causing further anguish for their families and friends. Amnesty International is calling on the British Government to ratify the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearances, which inexplicably it has yet to do.

The rise of right wing authoritarian regimes sees an increased threat to journalists. Ali Rocha, co-founder of Brazil Matters, highlighted the killing in the Amazonian jungle of Brazilian indigenist activist Bruno Pereira and British journalist Dom Phillips in 2022, when Bolsonaro was President. Branch Vice Chair Grace Livingstone noted the sharp increase in threats to journalists in Argentina since Milei came to power. He posted no fewer than 93 aggressive posts in a 48-hour period on Twitter/X against one particular journalist, behaviour that has led to physical attacks on members of the profession. Likewise in El Salvador, journalists have gone into exile to escape state repression.

But as Tayab Ali, of Bindman’s solicitors, pointed out, the threat to journalists comes not just from the state but from within the media itself. He noted the rise of ‘client journalism’, where editors increasingly suppress the truth to please donors and governments.

Inevitably, the situation in Gaza dominated the discussion. Between 200 and 300 journalists have been killed since October 2023, more than all the journalists killed in the major wars of the 20^th century put together.

Behind this shocking figure, as broadcaster Sangita Myska pointed out, lies the Israeli assertion that journalists in Gaza are somehow ‘terrorist supporters’. More alarming is the readiness of much of the Western media to accept this unsubstantiated  propaganda. It was, she argued, a deliberate policy of discrediting journalists of colour.

Dr Moosa Qureshi of Health Workers 4 Palestine went further: “When you seal the borders and target journalists, you are not fighting terrorism: you are concealing genocide.”

John McDonnell MP, who is Secretary of the NUJ Parliamentary Group, agreed that the impunity states had in killing journalists was a threat to democracy itself. The reticence of the British Government to address these issues related to their complicity in the crimes committed by the Israeli state, through both arms sales and the continuation of normal relations, such as the warm welcome extended recently to the Israeli President. Nor has the Government taken any action against British citizens who have fought for the Israeli Defence Forces, although now Britain has recognised a Palestinian state, there is a stronger case for prosecution. The whole issue leaves the Government legally vulnerable, but also morally exposed.

Neve Gordon, Professor of International Law and Human Rights at Queen Mary University of London, set out the legal framework for the protection of journalists, which the Government claims to accept. But when the NUJ Branch wrote to the Foreign Office raising the targeted killings of their Al-Jazeera colleagues in Gaza, they received an irrelevant  – and frankly insulting – reply that Israel had a right to defend itself and there was no equivalence between it and Hamas and Hezbollah which were terrorist organisations, issues which the Branch had not raised.

Whether the so-called ceasefire in the region produces a meaningful end to Israel’s aggression or not – and there is little sign of that so far – it is unlikely that the issue of Western complicity will go away. Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on Palestine, presented her new report, Gaza Genocide: a collective crime, to the UN General Assembly last week. It highlighted the role of 63 states in Israel’s actions in both Gaza and the West Bank and castigated the multilateral system for “decades of moral and political failure” indicative of a global system of complicity.

Meanwhile the rising threat to journalists should be a matter of concern to all. Individuals from the floor at this meeting reported the threats and harassment they had suffered in pursuit of public interest stories. It is clear that in Britian as elsewhere the targeting of freelance, independent journalists, and particularly women of colour – “low-hanging fruit”, as Branch Chair Pennie Quinton noted – is part of a wider picture of repression, which necessitates urgent solidarity.

Mike Phipps’ book Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow: The Labour Party after Jeremy Corbyn (OR Books, 2022) can be ordered here.

Image: Front row, left to right: Neve Gordon, Sangita Myska, John McDonnell and Moosa Qureshi, holding up the names of some of the hundreds of journalists killed in Palestine since October. Copyright Pennie Quinton 🍉, reproduced with kind permission.