Reporters Without Borders in a symbolic protest renamed a Paris street after slain writer-blogger Avijit Roy on Monday.
As part of the observance of International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists (November 2), the organisation pasted the name of each of 12 journalists who have been murdered, tortured or disappeared, on the names of the streets adjacent to their respective country's embassy.
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The street on which Bangladesh Embassy is located was renamed after Avijit Roy as part of the campaign.
The detail of the campaign was reported on the website of the organisation.
The France-based global defender of freedom of information is using these 12 emblematic cases to highlight the fact that crimes of violence against journalists usually go unpunished because official investigations are inadequate or non-existent and because governments are apathetic.
The renamed streets are those with embassies of countries where journalists have been the victims of unpunished crimes. The embassy addresses have been changed to draw attention to the failure of these countries to take action and to remind them of their obligation to do whatever is needed to bring those responsible for these crimes to justice.
The organisation called on the public to support the #FightImpunity campaign by visiting the http://fightimpunity.org website. It provides details about unpunished crimes against such journalists as Lebanon’s Samir Kassir, France’s Guy-André Kieffer and Mexico’s María Esther Aguilar Cansimbe. It also allows visitors to take action by sending a personal email or tweet directly to the head of state or government of the country concerned.
Five new names were added to the list in 2015. They include Tunisian journalists Sofiane Chourabi and Nadhir Ktari, who went missing in Libya in September 2014, and Radio France Internationale journalists Ghislaine Dupont and Claude Verlon, who were murdered in Kidal, in northern Mali, on November 2, 2013.
Six weeks after their murder, the UN General Assembly created International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists and decided that it should be marked on the anniversary of their deaths.
“The cases of impunity that we are presenting are terrible symbols of passivity or deliberate inaction on the part of certain governments,” said Reporters Without Borders Secretary General Christophe Deloire.
“This International Day is an occasion for paying homage to the victims and for reminding governments of their obligation to protect journalists and to combat impunity. Those who target journalists will one day be held to account for their actions.”
Whether they were executed, gunned down, died under torture or disappeared, these journalists paid the price for their commitment to freedom of information. Some of these cases have become symbolic. Others are less well known. In the past 10 years, nearly 800 journalists have been killed in connection with their work. A total of 48 have been killed since the start of 2015.
In order to combat impunity, Reporters Without Borders also called for the appointment of a special representative to the UN secretary general on the safety of journalists.
Timeline: Attacks on Bloggers in Bangladesh