Journalists Under Fire   

Last September 30, as Haiti reeled from the coup that took power from Jean Bertrand Aristide, Haitian soldiers entered the home of Jacques Simeon, a reporter known to listeners of Radio Caraibes as "Jacky Caraibes." There the soldiers beat him, and then took him prisoner. His tortured body, the face almost unrecognizable, was found two days later.

Simeon was only one of at least 61 journalists around the world who lost their lives last year practicing their craft, according to a new report by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists. The 10-year-old group, with a staff of nine full-time employees and a budget of about $600,000, monitors violence, threats and intimidation against members of the press and intervenes on their behalf.

In addition to the murders in 1991, CPJ documented 156 physical attacks on journalists, 324 detentions, 151 incidents in which laws such as criminal libel statutes are used to harass journalists, and five journalists who remain missing and are feared dead. With raids, threats and expulsions, the total number of cases the group catalogued in its yearly report reached 1,264.

Those numbers, notes Joel Solomon, an associate director of CPJ and a specialist on Latin America, are worse than 1990's tally of under 1,000 incidents, and nearly double 1990's toll of 32 killings. (In 1989, there were 53 murders and 1,164 incidents.) "This is a time when people talk of a 'new world order,' but it's not possible to say journalists are safer," Solomon says. "There are still coups, there are still coup attempts. Journalists are still beaten and killed despite civilian governments."

Of Haiti's 77 abuses against journalists last year, for example, nearly all occurred during or since the September coup. In addition to the grisly death of Simeon, the committee documented one other murder of a journalist, and another is missing and presumed dead. Yet another is in jail, accused of setting fire to a police station. The reporter says he was covering the fire, a claim Solomon says CPJ is inclined to believe given the numerous attacks on journalists during and after the coup.

Likewise, the attempted coup in the Soviet Union produced a rash of incidents against the press, and before that, the crackdown in the Baltics resulted in three reporters' deaths. In all, CPJ verified 59 cases of abuse last year in the former superpower.

Other risky spots for journalists last year were Zaire, where newspaper offices were ransacked or destroyed by bombing; Yugoslavia, where journalists became targets in the civil war, leaving 19 reporters dead; Colombia, where 10 reporters died last year; and Peru, where six journalists were murdered.

Among Turkey's 82 documented incidents have been physical attacks, detentions, expulsions, censorship and confiscations of newspapers. One editor was convicted and sentenced to prison for violating a law prohibiting citizens from insulting the memory of the country's first president, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. The editor had published documents showing that the former Turkish leader was the son of a prostitute and born out of wedlock.

CPJ does not examine incidents against journalists in the United States, leaving that to organizations such as the ACLU and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. It does look into attacks or threats against American journalists overseas, however, and attempts to intervene on behalf of any journalist in trouble, through letter-writing campaigns that enlist the help of human rights organizations around the world. Solomon says a new database allows the group to compile customized information for those who request it, such as journalists or human rights organizations, and CPJ will mail 400 copies of this year's report in Spanish to news organizations in Latin America.

In spite of all the violence the report documents, Solomon says, "physical attacks are not always the first recourse against journalists." In Guatemala, for instance, there is a climate of fear created by many threats but few actual attacks. In China and Cuba journalists are kept on such short leashes that violence is relatively uncommon.

Nevertheless, Solomon says last year's documented abuses likely represent just a portion of incidents; many journalists around the world don't report threats or other actions out of fear of reprisal or a belief that such events are simply part of doing business.