Statistics on journalistic related deaths, injuries, jail-terms, business closures, home and livelihood losses are staggering to us as citizens who believe we live in a post-modern global society where atrocities such as these cannot possibly occur.
There are predominately higher numbers of deaths continuing to occur in Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Bangladesh, China, Thailand, and Yugoslavia (The nations mentioned are recognized and derived from lists of journalism related deaths that have taken place over consecurtive years.).
Unfortunately, the numbers of journalist deaths is increasing and in other nations as well. I have included a non-inclusive list of those journalists reported killed in 2001. They are listed by the countries where their deaths occurred as follows:
AFGHANISTAN: 9
Marc Brunereau, free-lance reporter who spent years covering the war in Afghanistan for publications including the Belgian daily Le Soir, died in Tashkent of wounds sustained in a 1999 shelling incident in Taloqan, Afghanistan. Brunereau and others were arriving by helicopter in the northern city of Taloqan when the airfield came under Taliban fire. Brunereau suffered severe shrapnel wounds. Although he received months of medical treatment, including several operations, shrapnel that remained in his body caused continuing health problems that resulted in his death two years later.
Pierre Billaud, 31-year-old reporter Radio Télévision Luxembourg, on November 11, Takhar Province along with Volker Handloik, 35 year old free-lance reporter on assignment for the German news magazine Stern, and Johanne Sutton, 35 year old reporter for Radio France Internationale, were killed when Taliban forces opened fire on the Northern Alliance armored personnel carrier they were riding on. The vehicle was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade, causing several passengers to fall or jump off; the three journalists were later found shot nearby.
Harry Burton, an Australian cameraman for the Reuters Television news agency, Maria Grazia Cutuli, 39-year-old Italian correspondent for the Milan-based newspaper Corriere della Sera, Julio Fuentes, 46-year-old Spanish correspondent for the Madrid-based newspaper El Mundo, Azizullah Haidari, an Afghan-born photographer for the Reuters news agency were killed in an ambush while traveling in a convoy from Jalalabad to Kabul. Gunmen dragged them out of their cars, forced them into the surrounding hills, and executed them, according to one of the drivers.
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