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| Internet Surveillance. (Illustration: Mike Licht) |
Journalists, bloggers and others who speak out against the powerful risk terrible repercussions for their work. Around the world, they face physical intimidation, violent attacks, and even murder for speaking out.
When such crimes are committed against those who exercise their right to free speech, the perpetrators all too often go unpunished. Those who are meant to enforce the law turn a blind eye. The oppressors can act with absolute impunity.
Every November 23rd, free speech organizations around the world draw attention to these travesties of justice in a Day To End Impunity. The number of uninvestigated crimes and unsolved murders of journalists makes for depressing reading—as does the slow but inexorable increase in victims who are targeted for their online work. Since 1993, the Committee to Protect Journalists have recorded the deaths of twenty-nine online reporters who were murdered for their work. Seventeen of those crimes went unsolved and unpunished.
