Concern over safety for journalists following editor's death

Watchdog groups for journalists have raised concern over the death of a newspaper editor in northern Iraq, calling for increased protection. "It was very tragic and unfortunate," the human rights and safety officer for the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), Sarah Dejong, told IRIN from Belgium on Wednesday. "But it is known that there have been a lot of rivalries between media groups in Kurdish areas, so it's not the first time," she added. Her comments follow a statement on Tuesday by the US-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), saying that according to the Associated Press (AP) and an Agence France-Presse (AFP) correspondent in the northern governorate of Mosul, Ahmad Shawkat, the editor of the Iraqi weekly Bila Ittijah (without orientation, i.e. neutral), was shot and killed by a gunman. The gunman and an accomplice had followed the journalist to his office roof on Tuesday afternoon. "Shawkat's daughter, Roaa, told AP that her father had received threatening letters several weeks earlier warning him to close his newspaper. Local police are investigating the murder," the statement said. "We have an affiliate in northern Iraq, so we will speak to them to find out exactly what happened," Dejong said. In an effort to raise security issues, the IFJ recently met the Federation of Arab Journalists (FAJ), with which it agreed to carry out a joint mission to Iraq in January 2004 to meet Iraqi media professionals, UN agencies and civil society representatives with the aim of creating a platform for discussion among these groups. "We are extremely concerned about the lack of serious effort and commitment of the international community vis-à-vis the precarious situation of our Iraqi colleagues," said the IFJ's general secretary, Aidan White. On the issue of safety for journalists, the group also issued a report recently, accusing US officials of "secrecy, deceit and arrogance" in the context of journalists killed by US troops in Iraq. The report, entitled "Justice Denied on the Road to Baghdad", focused on four incidents in which seven journalists were killed, including those killed at the Palestine Hotel in the capital, the deaths of an ITN correspondent, an Al-Jazeera journalist and a Reuters news agency cameraman. In the case of Mazen Dana, the Reuters cameraman, the IFJ said this killing stood apart from the rest. "Neither [Reuters nor Dana's family] were advised directly of the completion and findings of your investigation, which were instead communicated in a haphazard way by a military spokesman responding to journalists' questions in Baghdad," the chief executive of Reuters, Tom Glocer, wrote in a letter to US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld. Earlier in October, the CPJ filed three new Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests related to the same cases. "The FOIA requests information regarding the two 8 April attacks, as well as the 17 August killing of the Reuters cameraman. Mazen Dana, by a machine-gunner near the Abu Ghurayb Prison outside Baghdad, and the 22 March death of the British ITV reporter, Terry Lloyd, whose two colleagues remain missing," a CPJ statement said. According to the watchdog organisation, Washington has only provided summary explanations, and in some instances no explanation at all, for the deaths. The CPJ has also recommended that US officials ensure that Coalition troops take all necessary measures to avoid harming members of the media.