"In many countries, 2011 was a year of demonstrations and struggles for liberty and democracy; most rulers responded with systemic violence. The aim was not just to nip the protests in the bud, but also to suppress reporting on them.”

The head of the German section of Reporters Without Borders (RWB), Michael Rediske, sees this as one main reason for the increase in repression and violence directed at media workers in 2011.

Deaths and arrests

In all, at least 66 journalists were killed in 2011 - last year, RWB put the death toll at 57. One thousand and forty-four journalists were arrested, many of them in connection with the "Arab Spring." This is almost double the number in the previous year.

According to the annual RWB report, the violence mainly affected local journalists.

The aim of the human rights organization, founded by journalists in France in 1985, is to bring the fate of all these media workers to the attention of the general public.

No region of the world exempt

Journalists were arrested, summoned to court and interrogated in connection with the demonstrations in Greece, Belarus, Uganda, Chile and the Occupy Wall Street protests in the USA.

The report says governments tried in this way to stop the spread of information that was unfavorable for them.

Responding to the annual report by RWB, the German government's human rights commissioner, Markus Löning, said, "It is particularly shocking that even journalists in our direct neighbourhood, for example, in Azerbaijan, Russia, Belarus or Turkey, are being persecuted and repressed."

Central role for bloggers

RWB warns that Internet activists reporting in blogs, on Facebook or via Twitter have increasingly attracted the attention of authorities and of groups tending to violence.

It says five such activists died in 2011, three of them in Mexico. One hundred and ninety-nine bloggers were arrested, and 62 were physically assaulted.

"In some countries, bloggers have taken on a central role," Michael Rediske says, "especially when conventional media are strongly censored or international journalists are not allowed into the country."

Global problem

In addition, he says, the number of countries with Internet censorship has risen from 62 to 68.

Attacks on press freedom are a global problem. For the first time, RWB has put together a list of the ten most dangerous places for media worldwide.

These regions, countries and cities featured extreme media censorship and violence against journalists. As in 2010, the countries with the highest number of killed journalists include Pakistan (10 deaths), Iraq (7), and Mexico and Libya (5 each).

Author: Kay-Alexander Scholz / tj
Editor: Michael Lawton