Journalism itself can be used to defend foreign reporters at risk

Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc. The IRE Journal, Mar/Apr 2001 by Simon, Joel

If you wanted to learn the truth in Mozambique, Carlos Cardoso was just about the only person to help you. In a country where the press is tightly controlled by the ruling FRELIMO party, Cardoso published an independent fax newsletter called Metical that reported on government corruption and human rights abuses.

After leaving his office on November 22, Cardoso was driving through the streets of Maputo, Mozambique's capital, when two cars cut him off. Cardoso died in a hail of bullets fired by two gunmen wielding AK-47s; his driver was seriously injured.

While the assassins are still at large, few in Mozambique doubt that Cardoso was killed because of his reporting. The day he was murdered another Mozambican journalist, Custado Rafael, was assaulted and had his tongue slashed by three men who accused him of "talking too much." Rafael had been investigating corruption at the Mozambique Commercial Bank, and Cardoso had been reporting on the same story.

Cardoso's murder shows why investigative reporters around the world face special risk, particularly in countries where the press is generally restricted and officials are unaccustomed to public scrutiny. In such countries, because there are so few investigative journalists, those who want to silence a story may try to do so by killing the messenger. As one of Cardoso's colleagues in Mozambique put it, "He was killed because he was isolated."

Applying pressure

Twenty years ago, the Committee to Protect Journalists was created to ensure that no journalist working on a dangerous story felt alone. CPJ's model was the 1980 case of Alcibiades Gonzales Delvalle, a Paraguayan journalist who was visiting the United States when he learned that he would be arrested if he returned to Paraguay. Gonzales, who had been a long-time critic of the Alfredo Stroessner government, decided to go home anyway, but to let U.S. journalists know that he faced arrest. When Gonzales was arrested, his journalist colleagues made sure it was big news, and pressure on the Paraguayan government forced his release.

CPJ has refined and expanded that strategy, but we still use journalism to defend journalists around the world. Each year, we investigate, document and make public nearly 600 individual attacks, sending out the news as soon as it is confirmed and posting it on our Web site, www.cpj.org.

Many journalists tell us that the fact we are investigating an attack makes them feel more secure. In other cases, we can bring redress simply by highlighting individual abuses. We also can compile a damning record of press freedom violations that we can use to publicly pressure a head of state, or others responsible for abuses.

Those who use violence or the threat of violence to silence the press and turn it away from reporting a story must be made to understand that such tactics will only ensure greater and more intense coverage of the story.

International spotlight

By highlighting abuses, CPJ has helped win freedom for a number of jailed or detained journalists in the past year. Serbian reporter Miroslav Filipovic was sentenced in July to seven years in prison for reporting on alleged atrocities committed by Serbian troops in Kosovo. An intense international campaign helped win his release in October, soon after the fall of Slobodan Milosevic.

CPJ also fought for the release of Russian reporter Andrei Babitsky, who was detained for his critical reporting on the Chechen war. We pressured a Mexican police chief to drop criminal charges against a reporter who was briefly jailed after publishing an article linking him to the drug trade. And recently, we helped secure the release of Swiss journalist Oswald Item detained by Indonesian authorities for reporting in the embattled province of Irian Jaya without a proper visa.

Cardoso's murder reminds us that the more isolated a journalist is, the more vulnerable he or she becomes. CPJ will continue to investigate Cardoso's murder, and to make public any progress. We want to make sure that his killing is not just a local story, but an international incident. We hope that someday soon Cardoso's killers will be captured, and that the story they thought they could suppress will become major news.

By Joel Simon

Joel Simon is the deputy director of the Committee to Protect Journalists. He reported on Latin America for 10 years, and is the author of "Endangered Mexico: An Environment on the Edge" (Sierra Club Books).