‘Top 10 most dangerous places for reporters’
The Arab Spring has taken its toll on the media with double the number of journalists being killed in the Middle East in 2011 compared with 2010.
This year saw a total of 20 reporters losing their lives in the region as uprisings spread from Tunisia to Egypt and across the Arab peninsula and North Africa.
A similar number of reporters were also killed in Latin America, due to continual threat of “exposed to the threat of criminal violence”, said Reporters Without Borders (RSF) in its annual press freedom report.
The press freedom group for the first time compiled the world’s 10 most dangerous places for the media:
- Manama, Bahrain
- Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire
- Cairo’s Tahrir Square, Egypt
- Misrata, Libya
- Veracruz state, Mexico
- Khuzdar, Pakistan
- The Manila, Cebu and Cagayan de Oro metropolitan areas on the islands of Luzon and Mindanao, Philippines
- Mogadishu, Somalia
- Deraa, Homs and Damascus, Syria
- Sanaa’s Change Square, Yemen
The 2011 Press Freedom Index reports that this year has seen a total of 66 journalists killed, an increase of 16 percent over the previous year.
The past 12 months saw 1,959 journalists physically harmed or threatened and a further 1,044 journalists were arrested.