Safety of Journalists

John Nicolson Excerpts

Thursday 10th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[John Nicolson (Ochil and South Perthshire) (SNP) [V]]

Dictators hate journalism. Journalism at its finest speaks truth to power. That is why tyrants the world over hate both what they say but also what they represent. Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarusian dictator, was so desperate to silence the brave young journalist Roman Protasevich that he was prepared to hijack his plane and force it to land in Minsk, the capital of his dark regime. Lukashenko wanted him silenced. But we will not rest until he is freed, and we stand with the brave people of Belarus and their journalists against the evil dictator who uses kidnap, rape and murder to try to silence them. It is dangerous to be a journalist.

Israel, a country that sees itself as a western democracy, took the opportunity afforded by its recent onslaught against Gaza to use fighter jets to bomb the building housing Associated Press and al-Jazeera. It was a direct attack on press freedom and an attempt to silence those reporting the bombardment of a captive Palestinian population by a military superpower. No journalists were killed that day. But Israel has form, and we remember that in a previous Israeli onslaught in 2003, James Miller, a multi-Emmy award winning Welsh cameraman, was murdered by Israeli troops who continued to fire on him even after the reporter he was with shouted, “We are British journalists.”

There have been so many killings of journalists that it seems almost invidious to single any individuals out. But we all remember Marie Colvin, the celebrated Sunday Times correspondent killed when Assad’s troops, almost certainly targeting her, shelled the building in Homs where she was sheltering as she covered the regime’s atrocities. Closer to home, it took the shooting of Lyra McKee in Derry by IRA thugs to get Northern Ireland’s recalcitrant political leaders to issue a joint statement condemning her murder as an attack on the political process and democracy. Although Frank Gardner survived an al-Qaeda attack, we are forever reminded of the price he paid when we see him reporting on our screens from a wheelchair. Brave and fearless every one of them, armed only with a pen, microphone or camera, killed by cowards bombing and shooting from afar.

Today here in this House we honour a fine craft and resolve, I hope, as parliamentarians, to affirm, whatever our politics, the right of journalists, whether at home or abroad, to scrutinise and examine, to probe and uncover without fear or favour. It is an ever more dangerous craft, but never has it been more needed.