[Síguenos ahora también en WhatsApp. Da clic aquí]

At least 19 journalists have been subjected to forced disappearances over the past decade around the world and still remain missing, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemned on Friday.

This figure is more than half 32 informants are missing overall over the past ten years, according to RSF calculations published in a statement on the occasion of the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances.

“Governments bear direct responsibility for this, since by definition ‘enforced disappearance’ means deprivation of liberty inflicted by state agents who deny or conceal the fate and whereabouts of the disappeared person,” recalled the organization, which fights for freedom to press.

Paris-based RSF also notes that “a dozen governments” are behind all these disappearances.

Of the 19 journalists who have been subjected to enforced disappearances since 2015, four cases occurred in Burkina Faso, a country where the phenomenon has recently increased.

Mali, for its part, added three and the Democratic Republic of Congo added two more, while in Palestine two more remain missing – Haitham Abdel Wahed of Ain Media and Nidal al-Wahidi of the news site News Press – after being “abducted by the Israeli army on October 7, 2023.”