Committee to Protect Journalists Unveils the Impunity Index

There's a new list of nations that let journalists get killed. The idea is to embarrass leaders whose countries are on the list, so that they'll follow up when someone kills a reporter in their territory.

To get on the list, a country would have to have an outstanding number of cases where a journalist was murdered, and no murderer found or brought to justice. And, maintained this level of inaction for the last nine years.

And the winners are:

1. Iraq
2. Sierra Leone
3. Somalia
4. Colombia
5. Sri Lanka
6. Philippines
7. Afghanistan
8. Nepal
9. Russia
10. Mexico
11. Bangladesh
12. Pakistan
13. India

The top three, marked in red, are preoccupied with armed conflicts: which tend to make any sort of law enforcement awkward. The others, though, seem to have earned a place on the Impunity Index through sheer merit.

Although I think that reporters can be a royal pain in the neck, they also serve an important function. In theory, at least, reporters find and report facts that people in free societies need.

And no group should fall outside the law's protection.

About the Committee to Protect Journalists' hope that national leaders can be embarrassed by having their shortcomings published: I think it's worth a try.

• The Source: Committee to Protect Journalists
  • "Getting Away With Murder"
    Committee to Protect Journalists (April 30, 2008)
    "DPJ's Impunity Index ranks countries where killers of journalists go free"
    The lead paragraph told me that we're looking at something a bit off the norm for this sort of report.
    "Democracies from Colombia to India and Russia to the Philippines are among the worst countries in the world at prosecuting journalists' killers according to the Impunity Index, a list of countries compiled by the Committee to Protect Journalists where governments have consistently failed to solve journalists' murders."
    The page includes the methodology used, a statistical table, and a video.
  • "Statistics: Journalists Killed"
    "Since 1992, the Committee to Protect Journalists has compiled detailed accounts of every journalist killed on duty worldwide."
    This page links to detailed reports and resources.
• The News:
  • "New index names 13 countries where killers of journalists get away with murder"
    International Herald Tribune (May 1, 2008)
    "UNITED NATIONS: Thirteen countries are the worst offenders in letting killers of journalists get away with murder — from war-torn Iraq and Somalia to peaceful democracies including Mexico, Russia and India, the Committee to Protect Journalists said.
    "The committee said governments in the 13 countries have consistently failed to solve murders where journalists were targeted from 1998 through 2007.
    "There are at least 199 unsolved murders in these countries during that 10-year period — 79 in Iraq, 24 in the Philippines, at least 20 in Colombia, 14 in Russia, 9 in Sierra Leone, 8 in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Pakistan, 7 in Afghanistan and Mexico, and 5 in Somalia, Nepal and India.
    " 'This is a naming and shaming exercise,' Prof. Sheila Coronel of the Columbia University Journalism School, said at a news conference Wednesday at U.N. headquarters launching the new Impunity Index."
  • "Iraq tops 13 countries where journalists' killers are not prosecuted - CPJ"
    KUNA (Kuwait News Agency) (April 30, 2008)
    "UNITED NATIONS, April 30 (KUNA) -- Iraq tops the "Impunity Index" of 13 "democracies" where governments consistently failed to prosecute journalists' killers, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) which released the Index for the first time in connection with World Press Freedom Day to be marked May 3rd.
    The 13 countries where governments are unable or unwilling to prosecute the killers are: Iraq, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Colombia, Sri Lanka, Philippines, Afghanistan, Nepal, Russia, Mexico, Bangladesh, Pakistan and India.
    The committee acknowledged that the first three countries have been mired in conflict, but the rest, it noted, are "peacetime democracies," such as Mexico, where elected governments have failed to protect journalists.
    " 'Every time a journalist is murdered and the killer is allowed to walk free it sends a terrible signal to the press and to others who would harm journalists,' Joel Simon, CPJ Executive Director, told a press conference on Wednesday."
  • "CPJ Names 13 Countries Where Journalists' Killers Go Free"
    VOA ( Voice of America) (April 30, 2008)
    "The Committee to Protect Journalists says governments in South Asia are among the worst in the world at prosecuting the killers of journalists. In a new Impunity Index that covers unsolved murders over the past nine years, six of the 13 countries that have consistently failed to solve these cases are in South Asia. From U.N. headquarters in New York, VOA's Margaret Besheer has more.
    "CPJ's new Impunity Index cites 13 countries as having the worst records for letting killers of journalists get away with murder.
    " 'There are many problems confronting journalists around the world - censorship, incarceration - but there is no greater threat to the free circulation of ideas and information than murder,' said CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon. 'Especially murder without consequence. And that is what this Impunity Index measures.' "
    

Shocking! American University Forced to Allow American Military Recruiters On Campus!

"Yale Law School has lost an appeal to bar military recruiters because of the school's requirement that job recruiters pledge non-discrimination, a pledge the military cannot make because of 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell.'" At least, according to edgeBoston.com.

That's true, as far as it goes. The Solomon Amendment of 1996 allows the Secretary of Defense to not give federal funding to colleges and universities if they keep ROTC or military recruitment off campus. They're free to stay military-free, but now the Defense Department doesn't have to pay them to do so.

Now, about the Ivy League's story that the military's 'discriminatory' "don't ask, don't tell" policy is why they want the American military off-campus: It's just the latest paint job on an old policy.

I don't blame America's institutions of higher education for trying to maintain their hallowed traditions and lofty standards. It was thirty four years and three days ago that The Harvard Crimson wrote the following about the Ivy League schools and the ROTC.

"Like an octopus, ROTC firmly plant its tentacles into all Ivy League school for decades. But since the late 1960s, when the program became a target of antiwar protest at all eight colleges, ROTC and the various climates in which it lived or died have taken different forms.

"A look at ROTC's fate at the eight Ivy schools reveals that the arms of the Ivy League ROTC octopus no longer seem to belong to the same animal."

Taking information from a few sources, here's what happened to the octopus.

• Brown "phased out" ROTC in 1969.
• New York's Columbia University expelled the ROTC in 1969, remaining unsullied by the institution to this day.
• Cornell University, facing "a growing feeling that the University itself was too deeply involved in United States military efforts, the faculty of Arts and Sciences at Cornell voted to discontinue all credited ROTC courses in that college." In a remarkable show of tolerance, ROTC courses were permitted at the university's other five undergraduate colleges.
• Dartmouth was purged of militaristic chauvinists in 1969, only to have the ROTC return in the mid-1980s.
• Harvard faculty voted 207 to 125 to kick the ROTC off their campus in 1969.
• Princeton also "phased out" the ROTC in 1970. ("Phased out" is The Harvard Crimson's euphamism for Ivy League schools' clearing militaristic miasmas from their pure academic air.)
• Stanford was ROTC-free by 1973.
• Yale seems to have been a great leader in removing militaristic threats to academic tranquility. The ROTC left that campus "voluntarily," around 1968.

I was in and out of post-secondary academia from 1969 to 1985, and I see that not much has changed. The great academic leaders of America seem to still be as dedicated to their version of tolerance, diversity, and anti-militarism as ever.

If the hallowed halls of ivy didn't retain a reputation for something other than intellectual shenanigans, their anti-military stance would be a fine joke.

As it is, loose associations of Muslim fanatics around the world are trying to establish their version of sharia law. If they succeed, it's unlikely that the ivy league's cherished academic freedoms will remain.

Watching what are supposed to be the best minds in America continue in their anti-military ways is as pathetic as watching a old hippie wrap himself in a burning flag.

More facts from
"Advocates for ROTC."