NEW YORK, March 23: The already murderous conditions for the press in Sri Lanka and Pakistan deteriorated further in the past year, the Committee to Protect Journalists announced on Monday

In a press statement CPJ said the newly updated Impunity Index, a list of countries where journalists were killed regularly and governments failed to solve the crimes, showed that Sri Lanka and Pakistan had registered a sharp increase in the index.

Colombia, historically one of the world’s deadliest nations for the press, improved as the rate of murders declined and prosecutors won important recent convictions.

This year’s report is being released in Manila to mark the fourth anniversary of the murder of Marlene Garcia-Esperat, a Philippine columnist who reported on corruption in the government’s agriculture department. Garcia-Esperat was gunned down in her home in front of her family in a case that has become emblematic of the struggle against impunity. Two government officials are accused of ordering her murder.

“We’re distressed to see justice worsen in places such as Sri Lanka and Pakistan. Our findings indicate that the failure to solve journalist murders perpetuates further violence against the press,” said Joel Simon, CPJ’s executive director. “Countries can get off this list of shame only by committing themselves to seeking justice.”

CPJ’s Impunity Index calculates the number of unsolved journalist murders as a percentage of a country’s population. CPJ examined every state for the years 1999 through 2008. Cases are considered unsolved when no convictions have been obtained. Only those nations with five or more unsolved cases are included on this Index, a threshold reached by 14 countries this year.

Iraq, Sierra Leone, and Somalia top the Impunity Index. But most of the list encompasses peacetime democracies with functioning law enforcement, nations such as Russia, the Philippines and India.
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