Shireen Abu Aqla: ‘Crime of execution’ raises fear for journalists

Being killed for just doing your job is one of the most tragic and unfortunate ways to go.

The sudden death of 51-year-old Palestinian-American correspondent for Al Jazeera, Shireen Abu Aqla, while covering a raid by Israeli forces in occupied West Bank, is yet another tragic instance of how intrepid journalists throw themselves open to attack to get that story in the bag. Her death highlights the increasing dangers faced by the media either in conflict zones or no-conflict areas.

Even embedded war correspondents are not safe. Embedding began during the American attack on Iraq in “Desert Storm” but that is fraught with its own dangers. Danish Siddiqui was killed in Afghanistan allegedly by the Taliban. He was embedded.

Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based network, said Shireen Abu Aqla was shot “deliberately” by Israeli troops in Jenin. Her producer was also wounded. Israel’s prime minister said it was “likely” they were shot by Palestinian gunmen during an exchange of fire. But his military chief said it was not yet able to determine what happened.

The Palestinian president said he held the Israeli government fully responsible for what he described as a “crime of execution”.

In 2019, 61 per cent of journalist deaths occurred in countries without current armed conflicts. Back in 2016, 50 per cent of journalists who were killed in countries experiencing an armed conflict of some kind. Despite the figures remaining relatively even for the next few years, it is now generally more common for killings to be perpetrated in non-conflict areas, according to Statista.

According to a UNESCO report, ‘The Chilling: Global trends in online violence against women journalists’, 73 per cent of the women journalists surveyed said they had been threatened, intimidated and insulted online in connection with their work.

Shireen Abu Aqla was known to millions for her coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. On 11 May, she went to the Jenin refugee camp to report on a raid by Israeli soldiers and security forces, which the Israeli military said was conducted to apprehend “terrorist suspects”.

The Palestinian health ministry said Abu Aqla was hit in the head by a live bullet during the raid. She was taken to a hospital in a critical condition and later pronounced dead.

Another Palestinian journalist, Al Jazeera producer Ali Samoudi, was shot in the back and was in a stable condition in hospital, the health ministry added.

“We were going to film the Israeli army operation and suddenly they shot us without asking us to leave or stop filming,” Al Jazeera cited Samoudi as saying. “The first bullet hit me and the second bullet hit Shireen.”

Video of the shooting showed Abu Aqla was wearing a blue flak jacket clearly marked with the word “press”, as well as a helmet.

While her death is creating shock waves in its slipstream, there are many others who have perished in the line of duty.

In 2020 alone, according to UN cultural agency UNESCO, which works to protect media workers, 62 journalists were killed just for doing their jobs. Between 2006 and 2020, over 1,200 professionals lost their lives the same way. In nine out of ten cases the killers go unpunished.

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There is a list of names of journalists who are internationally known. They were killed for trying to ferret out the truth or getting too close to the action.

Daniel Pearl was the South Asia Bureau Chief for The Wall Street Journal, based in Mumbai, India. Pearl was reportedly on his way to an interview in Karachi, Pakistan, for a story about the “shoe bomber”, Richard Reid, when he was kidnapped on 23 January 2002. Investigators say he was led into a trap, believing he was to meet with Sheikh Mubarak Ali Shah Gilani. His captors demanded better conditions for prisoners being held at Guantanamo Bay and threatened to kill Pearl if the demands weren’t met.

Pearl was killed sometime between the end of January and early February, though the US government only confirmed Pearl’s beheading on 21 February 2002. Four men were convicted in the case. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, as the suspected mastermind of the 9/11 attacks being held by the United States, has said he personally killed Pearl.

Anna Politkovskaya was a Russian investigative journalist, best known for her reporting on corruption and human rights abuses in Chechnya. For nearly seven years, beginning in 1999, she reported on war-torn Chechnya for Novaya Gazeta, a paper known for its critical coverage of Russian politics.

Highly critical of the Kremlin, she was shot in broad daylight in the lobby of her Moscow apartment building on 7 October 2006. Five men were sentenced for the killing of Politkovskaya.

Marie Colvin was an American journalist who worked for the British newspaper The Sunday Times for 25 years. Considered one of the world’s leading war correspondents, she reported from war zones on three continents over the course of her career. She was blinded in one eye by a Sri Lankan army rocket-propelled grenade in 2001, and wore a black eyepatch.

She was killed covering the siege of Homs during the Syrian civil war in 2012. Her family believes that she was specifically targeted by the Assad regime for her criticism of the Syrian government. Assad has denied any wrongdoing.

James Foley was a freelance war correspondent who had worked in Iraq, Libya and Syria. Working for the US-based online news outlet GlobalPost during the Syrian civil war, he was kidnapped by ISIS gunmen in northwest Syria on 22 November 2012. Almost two years later, on 19 August 2014, a video appeared in which Foley was beheaded. ISIS claimed Foley’s execution was retribution for the US military intervention in Iraq.

Gleydson Carvalho was the director of the radio station Radio Liberdade FM 90.3 in Camocim, Brazil. According to Reporters Without Borders, Carvalho “was well known for criticizing the Ceará state government and Brazilian political corruption on his very popular program”. During one of his shows, two men entered the station claiming they wanted to place an ad. Once in range of Carvalho, they shot him to death live on air.

Niloy Neel, a Bangladeshi blogger known for being an anti-extremist voice of reason, was also an advocate for the rights of minorities and women, and was known for his atheist views. On 7 August 2015, he was hacked to death by a gang armed with machetes at his home in Dhaka.

David Gilkey was an experienced National Public Radio photojournalist and Zabihullah Tamanna was an Afghan freelance journalist hired to assist him as an interpreter. According to NPR, as the two journalists were travelling in a convoy on a remote road in the Helmand province of Afghanistan, the convoy was attacked. NPR’s sources in Afghanistan claim that the Taliban knew that the Americans were coming and specifically targeted them.

Pavel Sheremet was a journalist for the Ukrainian news site Ukrainska Pravda, which covers corruption in Ukrainian politics. The New York Times described him as a “thorn in the side of (then) President Aleksandr Lukashenko’s autocratic government.” On 20 July 2016, Sheremet was killed in Kiev when a bomb exploded under his car as he was driving to record a radio programme.

Javier Valdez Cárdenas was an investigative reporter and editor of the weekly Riodoce, which published numerous articles on drug trafficking and organised crime in Sinaloa, Mexico. On 15 May 2017, he was accosted as he was leaving the office and shot at least a dozen times.

Daphne Caruana Galizia ran “Running Commentary”, a blog that exposed corruption in Maltese politics. She reported that the Maltese Prime Minister and his wife had suspicious financial dealings in Panama and Azerbaijan, allegations that the Prime Minister denied.

In her final blog post on 16 October 2017, she categorised the current political situation in Malta as “desperate”. Thirty minutes later, according to CNN, as she left her home in Bidnija, a bomb tore through her car.

Danish Siddiqui, 38, the celebrated photojournalist, was embedded with the Afghan Special Forces when he was killed in Kandahar’s Spin Boldak district on 16 July 2021. The parents of Siddiqui later complained to the International Criminal Court (ICC), accusing the Taliban of his murder.

Photographs of Siddiqui lying on the ground with his flak jacket removed were shared on the Internet. He was embedded but got detached from the rest of the convoy. Desperately trying to hide in a mosque he was allegedly killed in “cold blood.”

Danish has been given the Pulitzer award for his coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic. The family has set up the Danish Siddiqui Foundation to honour his legacy.

In Shireen Abu Aqla’s killing, blame shifting continues between Israelis and Palestinians. The larger issue is that in most journalist killings those responsible aren’t brought to book.

Meanwhile, here’s an epitaph for the utterly brave Shireen Abu Aqla: “Oh God of dust and rainbows, help us see/ that without dust the rainbow would not be.” (Langston Hughes)

The author is CEO of nnis. Views expressed are personal.

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