"Things happen." With this cynicism, he dismissed Donald Trump's question about journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who, according to all indications, was killed by a Saudi firing squad in the Turkish embassy. We can't say that the Tyrant is spitting on his grave, because there isn't even a coffin to mourn his death: this journalist from Washington Post He was dismembered, and it's assumed that the different parts of his body were chemically dissolved. Yes, things happen.
When we think of dead journalists, the cliché leads us to war reporters killed on the battlefield as more or less collateral damage. But this is changing. From the 1990s to the present, assassinations by hitmen have multiplied. Josep Gifreu explains this very well in his latest book. Argos in the labyrinthPublished by Saldomar, the book compiles various cases from a historical perspective. It features Khashoggi, but also Gareth Jones, who reported on the horrors of the famine campaign waged against Ukraine in the 1930s. And Josep Maria Planes, if we want a more local example. Beyond the grim catalog of journalists killed for trying to report uncomfortable truths, the book provides a crucial piece of information: in eight out of ten cases, these murders go unpunished. If, moreover, we accept that the high death toll of journalists in Gaza is not the result of the inevitable consequences of war—the damned things that happen—but rather selective and deliberately targeted killings intended to silence a particular view of the conflict, then it becomes urgent to reformulate supranational legislation to curb these killings. And not only to enact them: but also to enforce them to the fullest extent, no matter how much the Trumps of the world push in the exact opposite direction.
