Nearly 60 journalists have been murdered in recent months, and prosecutions of journalists for "treason" and "extremism" are on the rise, according to a report released by the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) Saturday. The annual half-year review of press freedom by the Paris-based WAN painted a grim picture of attacks, imprisonment and murder facing journalists in many countries on the eve of the World Newspaper Congress and World Editors Forum in Cape Town, South Africa. "The past six months have brought another disturbingly high death toll of journalists and media professionals, killed both in and outside of conflict zones," the report said. Nevertheless, "a quasi-total impunity still prevails throughout the world and most notably in Central and Latin America, but also in the war-torn Iraq and in Russia," it added. "Administrative and legal harassment, arbitrary arrests and detentions have remained a pattern to suppress press freedom in countries as diverse as Belarus, Egypt, Zimbabwe, China or Vietnam," according to the report. Also death threats continued to reach investigative reporters, "whether they work in Haiti or in Croatia," it said. According to the report, criminal defamation was still widely used against journalists, while cases of prosecution on charges of treason and extremism seemed to be on the rise. New court and search cases across Europe and the United States showed the urgent need "to provide for a clear legal protection of journalists' confidential sources." Some 59 journalists have been killed since November 2006, nearly half of them in Iraq, where 26 lost their lives. The WAN, which represents newspapers and news agencies in 102 countries around the globe, defends and promotes press freedom worldwide.
