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UN chief of rights Michelle Bachelet has urged all countries to do more to protect journalists, especially during the COVID-19 crisis, as her work helps save lives.
Speaking at an event in support of press freedom in Geneva, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights noted that around 1,000 journalists have been killed in the last decade, and that nine out of 10 cases “remain unsolved. ”.
His comments, on the eve of the trial of alleged accomplices of extremists who killed 12 people in the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo in 2015, were echoed by political cartoonist Patrick Chappatte.
“We live in an open world with closed minds,” he told participants at the UN General Assembly side event for press freedom and freedom of expression.
Line ‘crossed in blood’
“We have seen a cross line in blood five years ago and that is the line where they can kill you in Paris, Europe, anywhere, they can kill you for your opinion. And that was a new threshold. “
Amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, media work is paramount, High Commissioner Bachelet continued, as her reports are “an essential tool for officials to quickly learn where measures are being improperly applied” and which concerns are most important to people.
Without naming them, he said several countries had seen “an increasing politicization of the pandemic and efforts to blame its effects on political opponents have led to threats, arrests and smear campaigns against journalists who maintain factual information about the spread. of COVID-19 and the adequacy of the measures to prevent it ”.
He added: “When journalists are targeted in the context of protests and criticism, these attacks are intended to silence the entire civil society and this is a matter of deep concern… Journalism enriches our understanding of all kinds of political problems, economic and social; delivers crucial and, in the context of this pandemic, life-saving information; and it helps maintain governance at all levels, transparent and accountable. “
In a press conference following the event, Swiss President Simonetta Sommaruga echoed the High Commissioner’s concerns about threats to freedom of expression.
Even in Switzerland, where people have the opportunity to vote several times a year, the concept should not be taken for granted, Ms Sommaruga explained, in response to a journalist’s question and earlier comments about reducing space and threats. to the press: “not always dictators (but) also business models.”
“Freedom of the press is not something that you simply have, it is something that you have to defend and continue to defend,” said the Swiss president.
Infrastructure for democracy
“In our country, the economic situation for the Press is very, very difficult, that is why we (the Federal Government) are looking for ways to better support it, because we think that the Press, the media, provide the infrastructure for democracy. “She said.” If we want this infrastructure to exist, we must also support it, while ensuring its independence. “
Previously, Chappatte described how “moralistic mobs” now used social media to intimidate others into getting what they want.
“They come together like a storm. They take on a theme, they denounce expression, they denounce cultures, they go after cartoonists ”.
It was no longer repression “by the State or religious powers, but by society itself,” he insisted.
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