Comments on: Dangerous Professions: Journalism in Central Asia & the Caucasus

By: klaus

klaus — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 05:00:19 +0000

hey now,
gongadze was georgian, but he was investigating corruption in UKRAINIAN president’s administration.

thanks for the list BTW

By: Joshua Foust

Joshua Foust — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 01:41:27 +0000

Frank, thank you – I added him. I also found some more Russians who had been murdered.

Laurence, I found one RFE/RL reporter who died in a Turkmeni jail last year, and it looked enough like murder (i.e. her family reported seeing head wounds at the morgue) for me to include it here. But otherwise, I couldn’t find any outright murders in either Turkmenistan or Uzbekistan, at least none as brazen as the Kazakh or especially Russian journalist deaths. Considering its population, I find Kazakhstan’s journalist murder rate especially high.

Also, remember, this doesn’t include instances of wrongful imprisonment, harrassment, beatings, torture, maiming, or forced exile. That list is far too large for me to recount here.

By: Laurence

Laurence — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 20:16:42 +0000

Josh, Thank you for the informative post. But isn’t something missing? What about Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan? Were no journalists killed in those countries during the past year?

By: Frank

Frank — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 18:20:46 +0000

Georgiy Gongadze was found decapitated in 2000 in Ukraine and the lethargy and inaction on the part of the Kuchma government (Kuchma was directly and personally implicated in the murder) was a fairly major factor in the Orange Revolution.

By: Joshua Foust

Joshua Foust — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 16:33:43 +0000

Off the top of my head, Iraq, Colombia, and Mexico have really high journalist murder rates. There may be others.

By: That Armchair Philosopher

That Armchair Philosopher — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 15:16:23 +0000

Wow. Thats a pretty interesting, if unfortunate set of statistics. I wonder which other country comes close when it comes to suddenly silencing the fourth estate and their reps..