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243 journalists exiled since 2001

PESHAWAR: At least three journalists a month have fled their country to escape violence, imprisonment or harassment since 2001, said the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a New York-based press-freedom organisation, in a new report released on World Refugee Day (Tuesday, June 19).

The CPJ has documented 243 cases of journalists being forced into exile over the past six years. The exiled journalists hailed from 36 countries but more than half came from just five nations: Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Colombia and Uzbekistan.

“Only one in seven exiled journalists ever returns home,” the report said, adding that those who remain in exile “face slim opportunities in journalism”. According to the report’s authors, CPJ programme staff Elisabeth Witchel and Karen Phillips, less than one-third of the 209 journalists currently in exile have found work in their profession.

CPJ executive director Joel Simon deplored the conditions that have led to the flight of journalists from so many countries. “The fact that in two out of three cases the exiled journalists were driven out of the profession altogether only completes the job of those who seek to silence the press,” Simon said.

Sixty percent of the 243 journalists in exile were from African countries. North America, Europe and Africa host the most journalists in exile, with the US, UK, Kenya and Canada ranking as the top four countries of refuge. Nearly three-quarters of the journalists currently in exile ended up outside their own region. At least three-dozen ended up in neighbouring countries, in many cases unable to find work or not permitted to. In most such cases the exiles are living in extreme poverty, and many have been harassed by police.

Over the period surveyed, 34 exiled journalists eventually returned to their home countries. “Of those who returned, 86 percent resumed work in journalism. This is in sharp contrast to the journalists who remained in exile: just 30 percent were able to obtain jobs related to journalism (a category that includes teaching),” said the report. Though a large number have continued to contribute sporadically to expatriate media or media outlets in their homelands, the vast majority have had to take jobs requiring lower level of skills, it added.

The case of Pakistani journalist Majid Babar, among the 243 exiles, is a poignant example. He has been working at a gas station in the US since getting asylum in 2004.

“He fled Pakistan after being harassed by authorities for working with foreign correspondents covering terrorism,” the report said. Babar cannot find work as a journalist even though he spent his first year in the US as a Humphrey Fellow in Journalism at the University of Maryland. “Although I have many friends in the mainstream media here in the US, I can’t get any job,” Babar told CPJ. “I am just one of the millions of refugees.” staff report

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