The As­so­ci­a­tion of Caribbean Me­dia Work­ers (ACM) has called for crimes against re­gion­al jour­nal­ists to be tak­en se­ri­ous­ly.

In a state­ment the ACM said this UN In­ter­na­tion­al Day to End Im­puni­ty For Crimes Against Jour­nal­ists is a bleak one.

It said to­day 33 me­dia work­ers are con­firmed killed in the Is­raeli-Pales­tine con­flict: 28 Pales­tin­ian, 4 Is­raeli and 1 Lebanese.

“The As­so­ci­a­tion for Caribbean Me­dia Work­ers (ACM) al­so notes with sad­ness that Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean re­mains one of the dead­liest places to be a jour­nal­ist. Ac­cord­ing to UN­ESCO's Di­rec­tor Gen­er­al Re­port on the Safe­ty of Jour­nal­ists and the Dan­ger of Im­puni­ty, 69 jour­nal­ists have been killed in the re­gion in 10 coun­tries from 2022-2023.”

The ACM said to­day mat­ters be­cause not on­ly are the lives of jour­nal­ists at risk.

“In some of the most ex­treme cas­es, crimes against them go un­pun­ished. On Fri­day 8th Sep­tem­ber, a gun­man on a mo­tor­cy­cle fired sev­er­al shots in­to the of­fice of Na­tion­wide News Net­work, one of the lead­ing me­dia hous­es in Ja­maica. A sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion took place in Suri­name on Tues­day 24th Oc­to­ber at LIMFM ra­dio sta­tion. No one was hurt in ei­ther at­tack, but cars on both com­pounds were struck. De­spite wide­spread con­dem­na­tion, no one has been ar­rest­ed for ei­ther at­tack.”

It said im­puni­ty is an in­sid­i­ous threat, it serves to le­git­imise crime, by al­low­ing per­pe­tra­tors to go un­pun­ished and it can lead to a cli­mate where the mis­treat­ment of me­dia work­ers is nor­malised, per­haps even en­cour­aged.

The ACM said, con­sid­er Haiti, in dis­cussing the as­sas­si­na­tion of a Ra­dio-Tele jour­nal­ist in April, the Com­mit­tee to Pro­tect Jour­nal­ists (CPJ) says “There is lit­tle chance that (Dumesky) Ker­saint’s killers will ever be brought to jus­tice."

The ACM said it re­mained com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing the work of jour­nal­ists and fight­ing for their safe­ty.

“This in­cludes call­ing on re­gion­al law en­force­ment to take the in­ves­ti­ga­tions of crimes against them very se­ri­ous­ly.”

The as­so­ci­a­tion al­so re­peat­ed its call for a thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the at­tacks at Na­tion­wide News Net­work, LIMFM and the bomb­ing on the car of Do­mini­can jour­nal­ist Carlisle Jno Bap­tiste in Ju­ly.