In Wake of Latest Killings, Journos In Iraq Told: Do Not Carry Guns

By: Mark Fitzgerald
The International News Safety Institute (INSI) Friday urged journalists in Iraq not to carry guns despite the latest murders of a Al Arabiya News correspondent and her crew.

INSI, based in Belgium, said its urgent plea was prompted by an exchange between a reporter and Iraqi President Jalal Talabani at a press conference after the killings.

The reporter, who was unnamed in INSI's declaration, asked the president "to allow journalists to carry weapons to defend themselves."

"Send me an official request and I will approve it and inform concerned agencies to give you the right to carry arms," Talabani replied, according to INSI.

Bad idea, INSI said. The safety of journalists would probably diminish rather than improve if they were to carry weapons, the group argues.

"Journalists increasingly are being targeted in conflict largely because they have lost, in the eyes of certain elements, their status as neutral observers, INSI Director Rodney Pinder said. "If they bear arms they reinforce this misguided belief by placing themselves on one side or another. A journalist with a gun says some people in the situation I'm covering are my enemies and I am prepared to kill them if necessary. That is not the position of a neutral civilian."

Pinder also said that armed journalists would lose even the protection--"flimsy though it is"--afforded civilians in war by the Geneva Conventions. INSI said the 1977 Additional Protocol to the conventions demands that working journalists in conflict areas must be considered civilians, "provided they take no action adversely affecting their status as civilians."

"INSI and other organizations concerned with the safety of journalists in conflict believe that the bearing of arms would amount to that action," the group said.

Pinder condemned the "brutal and cowardly" murders by unknown gunman of Al Arabiya Iraq correspondent Atwar Bahjat, cameraman Khaled Mahmoud Al Falahi and technician Adnan Khairallah. The three had been covering the attack on the major Shiite shrine in Samarra. By INSI's count, 104 journalists and 23 support staff have been killed in the 23-month Iraq war.

"It is entirely understandable that journalists in Iraq, who have suffered so much, are contemplating extreme measures to protect themselves, and we sympathize with them in their plight." Pinder said. "But we must be very careful to avoid any action that might make a bad situation even worse both for individuals and the Iraq news community as a whole."