Hassan Istiila
Wednesday November 2, 2022
FILE - Somali journalists are seen during a stake-out on the outskirts of Mogadishu, Somalia, July 25, 2019.
Mogadishu (HOL) - Somalia has topped the dubious list of the Committee to Protect Journalists' Global Impunity Index for the eighth consecutive year.
The majority of people who murder journalists continue to go unpunished, according to CPJ's Global Impunity Index for 2022.
Over the last decade, the offenders in roughly 80% of the 263 incidents of journalists slain in retribution for their work have received no punishment.
Somalia is trailed by Syria, South Sudan, Afghanistan, and Iraq. These nations have all appeared on CPJ's index more than once.
The Global Impunity Index calculates the number of unsolved journalist murders as a percentage of each country's total population. Researchers analyzed a decade's worth of data from September 1, 2012, to August 31, 2022.
The index excludes cases of journalists killed in conflict or while on dangerous tasks, such as covering violent protests.
The CPJ recorded 19 unsolved journalist murders in Somalia since 2012, despite only having a population of under 16.5 million.
There were two cases of journalists being killed in the last year, according to the CPJ.
Prominent Somali journalist Abdiaziz Mohamud Guled, also known as Abdiaziz Afrika, was killed in a suicide bombing attack while driving from a restaurant in Mogadishu on November 20, 2021. Al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for the attack and said they had been "hunting" Abdiaziz, the director of the government-owned broadcaster Radio Mogadishu.
Veteran freelance reporter Jamal Farah Adan was shot and killed by two unidentified men as he was seated outside a shop he ran in the northern part of the city of Galkayo. Before his death, Jamal reported that he had received threats from Al-Shabaab. He had previously claimed to have survived an Al Shabaab attempt on his life just two months before being gunned down.
In February 2022, a military court in Galkayo tried and convicted four people for Jamal's killing. Two men were put to death by a firing squad.
The CPJ found that Mexico was one of the deadliest places to be a journalist in the Western Hemisphere. At least 13 journalists were killed in Mexico in the first nine months of 2022.
At least three of those journalists were killed in reprisal for their reporting on crime and political corruption, and they had received threats before their deaths.
The uptick marks the highest number CPJ has ever documented in that country in a year.
CPJ documented 28 unsolved journalist killings in Mexico since 2012 —the most of any country on the index.
Due in part to the fact that the CPJ bases its rankings on population size, it is placed sixth overall. The CPJ said it's often difficult to ascertain whether a journalist was killed for his work because of the "complex web of generalized violence in Mexico."
Myanmar appears on the index for the first time in 2022. Last year it ranked as the world's worst jailer of journalists in CPJ's December 1, 2021, prison census.