Iraq

Journalists die at high rates while covering protests in the Arab world and elsewhere. Photographers and freelancers appear vulnerable. Pakistan is again the deadliest nation. A CPJ special report

New York, December 6, 2011--The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the targeting of media by supporters of various political factions in Kurdistan. Journalists have been attacked and arrested in Iraqi Kurdistan and six media offices have been attacked in the past four days, according to news reports.

New York, September 9, 2011--The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns Thursday evening's killing of Iraqi journalist, filmmaker, and playwright Hadi al-Mahdi in Baghdad and calls on Iraqi authorities to immediately take steps to bring the perpetrators to justice.  

Al-Mahdi, radio show host and critic of the government, was shot dead in his home on Abu Nawas Street in the Baghdad neighborhood of al-Jidida on Thursday evening, Agence France-Presse reported. The Associated Press reported that a police officer said the journalist had been shot by gunmen using pistols outfitted with silencers. Witnesses at the crime scene told Human Rights Watch that they saw no evidence of a struggle or theft and that the journalist's valuables were left untouched. CPJ is investigating to determine whether the death was work-related.

New York, June 23, 2011--The Committee to Protect Journalists mourns the death of cameraman Alwan al-Ghorabi, who died in the southern city of Diwaniyya when a car bomb exploded in the city center on Tuesday. 

Few cases of sexual assault against journalists have ever been documented, a product of powerful cultural and professional stigmas. But now dozens of journalists are coming forward to say they have been sexually abused in the course of their work. A CPJ special report by Lauren Wolfe

CPJ’s 2011 Impunity Index spotlights countries
where journalists are slain and killers go free

We write a lot at CPJ about the terrible things that happen to journalists because of their reporting, but we don't often get a chance to show you what happens to them after they are forced to flee their homes and land abroad. This video, about three such journalists, is worth watching.

Kurdistan is different, as nearly every Iraqi Kurd I have ever met has said. Far less violent than the rest of Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, the parts of the north controlled by the Kurdish Regional Government have escaped the kind of sectarian unrest that continues to flare in the south. But in recent months more than 150 Iraqi Kurdish journalists have been injured or attacked, according to the local Metro Center to Defend Journalists. One journalist was murdered three years ago in Kirkuk after uncovering evidence of government corruption. But most of the journalists who find themselves more recently under siege have been covering violent clashes between the Kurdish security forces and protestors in Sulaymaniyah.