Call for independent United Nations led investigation into the death of Jamal Khashoggi

TORONTO, Oct. 19 2018 /CNW/ - Journalists for Human Rights is deeply concerned by reports that respected Washington Post Saudi reporter and columnist Jamal Khashoggi has disappeared from the Saudi consulate in Turkey and has likely been killed. Credible reports have since surfaced from Turkish officials, speaking under condition of anonymity, that Khashoggi was murdered onsite by Saudi operatives. Saudi authorities have denied these allegations. The case has sparked calls worldwide for a formal, independent investigation led by the United Nations.

JHR joins its voice to these calls.

This is but the latest reported issue in a series of attacks on journalists charted by this year's Global Press Freedom Index, by Reporters without Borders.

What makes the Khashoggi disappearance different is this: it appears that authorities are now prepared to go well beyond their own borders to stifle dissent with targeted "disappearances."

Further, journalists are now under attack in Western democracies as well as dictatorships, with targeted killings outside war zones – such as the case of the Maltese journalist Daphne Cariana Galizia, who was killed in Malta last year.

Since January 2018, 57 journalists have been killed, along with 10 citizen journalists and four media assistants, according to Reporters Without Borders. The numbers are already higher than the figures at the same time last year. Additionally, 155 journalists have been imprisoned, along with 142 citizen journalists and 19 media assistants.

As the Committee to Protect Journalists noted last month, the climate in today's Saudi Arabia is even more repressive for journalists. According to Reporters without Borders, more than 15 people in Saudi Arabia have been detained since last September.

Khashoggi left Saudi Arabia last year in order to be able to write critically about the country. Says Executive Director Rachel Pulfer: "His best work is exemplified in his final column, published this week in the Washington Post, as well as in the Toronto Star, on the cover of Toronto's Globe and Mail, and excerpts in the New Yorker among others: an impassioned plea for press freedom in the Arab World to ensure people are better informed and hence better equipped to understand what is happening in their societies and get involved in strengthening the governance of their societies."

JHR's networks of regional journalists in the Middle East say the Khashoggi case has created a crippling climate of fear: no-one wants to go on the record to criticize Saudi Arabia—lest they be the next to disappear.

As such, JHR joins its voice to global calls for a formal, independent investigation into what happened to Jamal Khashoggi.

• Our thanks to CNW Group for sponsoring this announcement

Notes for Editors

Journalists for Human Rights (JHR) trains journalists worldwide to cover human rights issues ethically and objectively. For 16 years, Canada-based JHR has worked with 15,565 journalists around the world. Currently JHR operates sector-wide programmes in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Syria, South Sudan, Jordan, and with Canada's Indigenous communities.

For more information about Journalists for Human Rights, please go to www.jhr.ca.

SOURCE Journalists for Human Rights (JHR)

Rachel Pulfer, Executive Director, Journalists for Human Rights, 147 Spadina Avenue #206, Toronto ON M5V 2L7, 416 413 0240 x 206