Reporters Without Borders and the city of Bayeux, in Normandy, today inaugurated a Journalists Memorial in homage to the approximately 2,000 journalists, photographers, TV cameramen and soundmen who have been killed worldwide since 1944. The memorial is the first of its kind in Europe.

The Journalists Memorial consists of a landscaped promenade with white stones that will bear the names of the journalists who have been killed in the course of their work throughout the world since 1944. Four of the stones, covering the years 1997 to 2005, have already been put in place. The other stones will be engraved and installed at the site in the coming months.

The memorial was designed and built by Samuel Craquelin, 45, an architect and landscape designer based in Lillebonne (Seine Maritime) who was the winner of the environment ministry’s National Landscape Prize in 1995 and the senate’s Heritage Landscape Prize in 2003.
At total of 53 journalists and 17 media assistants have been killed worldwide since the start of this year. The deadliest countries for journalists in the past 10 years have been Iraq (with 77 killed), Colombia (38), Philippines (33), Serbia (22), Russia (21), India (19), Sierra Leone (16), Mexico (15), Bangladesh (13), Brazil (12), Sri Lanka (12) and Afghanistan (11).

The French press has not been spared. The names of at least 28 French journalists (see list below) will appear on the memorial’s stones.
With 103 journalists and media assistants killed in the past three years, the war in Iraq is without doubt the deadliest armed conflict for the press since the Second World War. The recent fighting in Lebanon and Somalia has yet again shown that journalists working in war zones are especially exposed.

The number of journalists killed in the Vietnam war during the two decades from 1955 to 1975 is estimated to have been at least 63. A total of 49 journalists and media assistants were killed in the course of the fighting in former Yugoslavia between 1991 and 1995. The number killed during Algeria’s civil war from 1993 to 1996 was 77.

Reporters Without Borders carries out a range of projects aimed at increasing the safety of journalists. For example, it is working with French legislators François Loncle and Pierre Lellouche - the authors of a report entitled “Safety of Journalists and Press Freedom in War Zones” - to get the UN Security Council to adopt a resolution protecting journalists and to get UNESCO to approve a convention reaffirming the right of journalists to safety in all circumstances.

List of French journalists killed in the course of their work since 1944

1951 - Jean-Marie de Premonville (AFP) - South Korea, 1955 - Roger Ladevèze (France Soir) - Morocco, 1955 - André Leveuf (France Soir) - Morocco, 1955 - Roland Jourdan (NBC) - Morocco, 1956 - Jean Roy (Paris Match) - Egypt, 1956 - Jean-Pierre Pedrazzini (Paris Match) - Hungary, 1962 - Paul Guihard (AFP) - United States, 1967 - Bernard Fall (France-Amérique) - Vietnam, 1970 - Gilles Caron (Gamma) - Cambodia, 1970 - René Puissesseau (ORTF) - Cambodia, 1970 - Raymond Meyer (ORTF) - Cambodia, 1970 - Alain Clément (ORTF) - Cambodia, 1970 - Claude Arpin (Newsweek) - Cambodia, 1970 - Guy Hannoteaux (L’Express) - Cambodia, 1970 - Roger Colne (NBC) - Cambodia, 1971 - Francis Bailly (Gamma) - Cambodia, 1975 - Michel Laurent (Gamma) - Vietnam, 1975 - Paul Leandri (AFP) - Vietnam, 1989 - Jean-Louis Calderon (La Cinq) - Romania, 1991 - Pierre Blanchet (Nouvel Observateur) - Yugoslavia, 1991 - Jean-Claude Jumel (TF1) - Somalia, 1993 - Yvan Scopan (TF1) - Russia, 1994 - Olivier Quemeneur (Australian, Broadcasting Corporation) - Algeria, 2001 - Johanne Sutton (RFI) - Afghanistan, 2001 - Pierre Billaud (RTL) - Afghanistan, 2002 - Patrick Bourrat (TF1) - Kuwait, 2003 - Jean Hélène (RFI) - Ivory Coast, 2005 - Samir Kassir (An-Nahar) - Lebanon.

Today’s inauguration was attended by relatives of some of the journalists whose names appear on the stones already in place: Michèle Montas, the widow of Haitian radio journalist Jean Dominique, who was gunned down in Port-au-Prince in December 2000.

Elizabeth and Dan Sutton, the sister and brother of Radio France Internationale journalist Johanne Sutton, who was killed in 2001 in Afghanistan.

Hélène Billaud, the sister of journalist Pierre Billaud, who was also killed in Afghanistan on 11 November 2001.

Martine Bourrat, the widow of Patrick Bourrat, a leading TF1 correspondent who was killed in 2002 in Kuwait.

Anne Waddington, the sister of British independent filmmaker James Miller, who was killed by Israeli gunfire in Gaza in 2003.

Anne Baldens-Duflot, the sister of RFI reporter Jean Hélène, who was murdered in Côte d’Ivoire in 2003.

The family of Deyda Hydara, the editor of the weekly The Point and Gambia correspondent of AFP and Reporters Without Borders, who was shot dead in Banjul in 2004.
Gisèle Khoury, the widow of Samir Kassir, a journalist with French and Lebanese dual nationality, who was blown up by a bomb planted in his car on 2 June 2005 in Beirut. Leonard VINCENT Bureau Afrique / Africa desk Reporters sans frontières / Reporters Without Borders