Caoilfhionn Gallagher, KC, is a human-rights lawyer and expert in accountability for crimes against journalists.
A long-established principle for many journalists is that the reporter should not become the story.
But on Nov. 2 – the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists – they are the story. And rightly so.
The date, proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly 11 years ago, was chosen to commemorate the kidnapping and killing of Radio France Internationale (RFI) journalists Ghislaine Dupont and Claude Verlon in Mali on Nov. 2, 2013. But all this time later, the suspected masterminds are still free. And questions remain – including whether the deaths were preventable, and whether the French military’s response to the kidnapping was adequate. RFI has reported that as many as 10 French soldiers were nearby on the day of the killings, but “they were poorly equipped and barely able to ensure their own safety,” let alone to protect the journalists.
Mr. Verlon’s daughter has written to French President Emmanuel Macron seeking the truth, so that the two bereaved families can finally begin the process of mourning. That experience is all too familiar for many families of journalists killed in retaliation for their work or whilst on assignment. I’ve seen the same themes again and again as a lawyer acting for many of these families: no answers about what happened to their loved one, many years later. Sluggish and ineffective investigations, often marred by secrecy. Impunity for the perpetrators. A lack of accountability for wider failures, such as law-enforcement errors in risk assessment. And, critically, a lack of international political will to hold other states to account for failing to protect journalists or investigate their deaths – or even when they target and kill journalists directly.
Many journalists’ deaths occur in conflict zones or in politically unstable countries. This week, in its 2024 Global Impunity Index, the Committee to Protect Journalists reported that two small countries – Haiti and Israel – are now the world’s biggest offenders in letting journalists’ killings go unpunished. But impunity for journalists’ deaths is not limited to conflict zones, dictatorships and countries beset by civil unrest. According to the UNESCO Observatory of Killed Journalists, the global impunity rate for all journalists’ deaths hovers between 85 per cent and 90 per cent. In other words, the killers of journalists go unpunished in roughly nine out of 10 cases, no matter where they happen. It is a statistic that has remained constant for decades, despite international initiatives. It is a stubborn yardstick – and a shameful one.
Canadians know this all too well. Twenty-six years ago, Tara Singh Hayer, the founder of the Indo-Canadian Times, was shot to death in his British Columbia home on Nov. 18, 1998. He was a remarkable journalist who continued to write hard-hitting columns despite numerous death threats and an assassination attempt in 1988 that left him paralyzed. There have still been no convictions for his killing, and questions remain about whether the risks to his life were mitigated – or even adequately assessed – by the Canadian authorities.
A week before his assassination, Mr. Hayer reportedly acknowledged the threats to his life, saying, “If they get me, they get me. There’s nothing I can do, and I’m not going to stop my work.” A week later, he was dead.
His brave words remind me of Daphne Caruana Galizia, the award-winning journalist who was assassinated by a car bomb in Malta in October, 2017, after three decades of harassment and abuse and multiple attempts to silence her. On Oct. 6, she told the Council of Europe about being “one woman with a blog” against the “constant propaganda” of a powerful political machine, living in a “climate of fear.” She described arson attacks on her home, attempts to cut off her income, the freezing of her bank accounts, dozens of libel suits brought by ministers and businesspeople, vile misogynistic attacks online, and critics in the street calling her a witch. “You get used to it, like a scar forms around a wound,” she said.
Ten days later, she was dead.
Shortly afterward, her eldest son – my brave client, Matthew Caruana Galizia – accused Malta and then-prime minister Joseph Muscat of being complicit in her killing. “A culture of impunity has been allowed to flourish by the government in Malta,” he said. In 2021, an independent public inquiry agreed with Matthew’s analysis, concluding that Mr. Muscat and his government created a “favourable climate” for anyone seeking to eliminate Ms. Caruana Galizia to do so with the minimum of consequences. The state effectively gave a green light for her to be treated as a target, failing to recognize the real and immediate risks to her life and failing to take reasonable steps to avoid those risks.
But while that climate of impunity festered in Malta, the rest of the world – including countries that claim to support media freedom – left Daphne Caruana Galizia to her fate. And even now, it is the bereaved family and civil society holding Malta to account for continuing failures, rather than other states.
We have seen such international indifference to known risks to journalists many times. A blind eye was turned to Saudi Arabia’s conduct in the lead-up to the brutal dismemberment of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, which led to a short period of frosty relations before a return to diplomatic business as usual – despite continuing impunity in relation to his death.
Today, we remember the journalists who have died in the line of duty. We must call for accountability for their killers, and for any states that failed to take action to prevent journalists’ deaths. But we must also demand an end to the international culture of indifference. Canada and other states must ensure they truly hold other countries to account when they kill journalists, put them at risk or fail to investigate their deaths.