By Andy Rowell, 26 October 2006

When the celebrated Nigerian activist and author, Ken Saro-Wiwa was brutally murdered in November 1995 by the ruthless military junta one of the final things he said was simple. “You can only kill the messengers, you cannot kill the message.” Eleven years on, his words resonate more than ever as an increasing number of people who live by the pen are dying due to their profession.

The world was horrified earlier this month by the high-profile murder of Russia’s extraordinarily brave journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was executed in her apartment block in Moscow. She was killed to stop her being a messenger of the truth. Politkovskaya was the country’s most high profile journalist and President Putin’s fiercest critic, calling him “a product of the country's murkiest intelligence service". 

Her sympathies lay with the civilian victims of a conflict who were powerless to stop it but who were its greatest victims. They were also without a voice. She gave them a voice in her newspaper articles and books. On the day of her death, Politkovskaya had been due to publish an article describing the torture methods used by the Russian forces, including beatings and electric shocks.

In the end Politkovskaya paid the ultimate price for her campaigning and brave journalism.  She knew she was living on borrowed time, but carried on regardless. After she wrote one of her first articles claiming Russian armed forces had committed human rights abuses in Chechnya in 1999, she started receiving death threats. She did not walk away. She continued to write. She was once arrested and subjected to a mock execution by security forces in Chechnya. She was threatened with rape.

In 2004, she was poisoned by the Russian security services after the Beslan school crisis. After that she was terrified, and knew it was only a matter of time before she died.  Her writing took a huge toll on her and her family. She repeatedly had to flee the country, her husband left her and her son pleaded with her to stop. Her neighbours, afraid of the Russian security services, did not like her. But she always carried on, until four men followed her into her apartment block and “executed” her in the lift. They left the gun as a sign of a contract killing and as a warning to others. Now everyone is blaming the Kremlin and their puppet regime in Grozny controlled by Ramzon Kadyrov.

To start with Putin remained silent on the killing, but eventually he was forced to condemn her “disgusting murder”. He vowed that "all necessary efforts will be made for an objective investigation into the tragic death". But most people believe that this will not happen. Viktor Shenderovich, a well-known radio and television commentator, reiterates the feelings of many when he says “The culprits will never be found, because the people who will be investigating this murder walk down the same corridors as those who ordered it."

One of the most interesting reactions to Politkovskaya’s death is that although the international press has expressed outrage at their fallen colleague, the international political response has been largely suppressed. Her death “provoked a relatively muted official reaction from most western governments”, wrote one journalist from the Guardian. Europe needs Russian oil and gas. Europe needs to appease not criticise Putin so it can keep its citizens warm over winter. Putin knows this and therefore his cronies are safe to now sanction state-sponsored murder of their critics. 

For the tragedy is that Anna is not alone in Russia. She is the thirteenth Russian journalist to be killed in a contract-style killing since President Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000. All the killings are unresolved.  

Neither, is the problem just in Russia. Journalists are increasingly at risk everywhere, especially in war zones where the need for independent truth could hardly be greater. However threats, attacks, kidnappings and killings are a part of daily life for journalists working in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Take just the last couple of weeks. The London-based Italian photojournalist Gabriele Torsello has been kidnapped in Helmand province in Afghanistan. The same day as his kidnap was reported so too was the death of the Iraqi journalist Raed Qaies, who worked for the radio station Sawt Al Iraq (Voice of Iraq). Qaies was the 14th media worker to be killed this month.

In the last two weeks, some nine employees of the Al Shaabiya satellite channel were killed by gunmen.  The Iraqi Journalists’ Syndicate said two journalists, general director Abdul Raheem Al Nasrawi and Hussien Zakker, were killed in the attack along with 7 others who worked as administrative staff or guards for the channel. The news channel was a new one and had yet to even broadcast a single programme.

Just days before that incident, two Iraqi journalists had been kidnapped. Mohammad Abdul Rahman, an announcer for the Dejla radio station and Ali Kareem, the editor-in-chief of local newspaper Nabed Al Shabab, were both kidnapped by unknown gunmen. In total over one hundred and fifty journalists have been killed in Iraq since the beginning of the American invasion.

As the daily death toll mounts, we have finally found out what happened to one of the first journalists to be killed in the conflict. An inquest held in Oxford, England, has just concluded that British journalist Terry Lloyd was “unlawfully killed” by American troops in the first few hours of the invasion. For three and a half years, Lloyd’s family has tried to find out who killed him. But it has been a long hard struggle made worse by the non-cooperation of the Americans.

Up until the inquest we knew that Lloyd had died on March 22, 2003, while on assignment with three colleagues in Basra. Belgian cameraman Daniel Demoustier was wounded in the attack and, after the incident, the bodies of French cameraman Fred Nérac and Lebanese interpreter Hussein Osman, were missing. Although Osman’s remains were identified by DNA testing in June 2004, there has never been any trace of Nérac’s body.  Now the inquest has found that Lloyd was killed by a bullet to the head from a machine gun fired by US Marines as he was being driven to hospital.

At the inquest, the US refused to send any witnesses and edited key video material. The British National Union of Journalists is now backing calls for the US soldiers, including their commanding officers, to be brought to justice. The General Secretary of the Union, Jeremy Dear said: “The inquest verdict has confirmed what we always suspected: that Terry’s death was not an accident in the theatre of war but a callous act of murder.”

This is the unpalatable truth. That journalists are not being killed by mistake, they are being deliberately targeted for telling the truth. They are being murdered by those who have something to hide. There are a further 19 unresolved cases of journalists and media staff being killed by American fire in Iraq that the International Federation of Journalists is currently investigating.

A journalist’s only weapon is the power of the pen or the creativity of the image. They are not armed. They are not dangerous. But if those who speak truth to power and bear witness to the atrocities of our age are killed, held ransom or imprisoned, how will we ever know the truth? Anna Politkovskaya once said “The duty of doctors is to give health to their patients, the duty of the singer to sing, and the duty of the journalist is to write what this journalist sees in reality”. 

And if that journalist is murdered it is our duty to demand justice. We owe it to them. For society relies on campaigning and brave journalists to inform them of what is happening. The media are the window through which many people see and judge the world. For every journalist who is killed, that window gets smaller and darker, until one day there will be no window anymore. In its place will be a wall: A wall of silence and fear. And those that commit these heinous crimes should remember: You can only kill the messengers, you cannot kill the message.