Miami (August 20, 2014)—The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) today expressed outrage and indignation at the murder in Syria of American news photographer James Foley whose execution was shown in a video distributed through social media.
Foley, 40, was kidnapped on November 22, 2012 in northern Syria, where he was covering the uprising against the government of President Bashar al Assad. He was a freelance reporter working for the GlobalPost, an online news company based in Boston, and for the French news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP).
In a five-minute video titled “A message for the United States” aired initially on social media by the militant group Islamic State (Isis), a hooded executioner decapitates Foley. The group justified the murder as being in retaliation for new bombings by the United States in the north of Iraq.
The chairman of the IAPA’s Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, Claudio Paolillo, expressed “outrage and indignation at the journalist’s execution, shown without compassion on social media in an attempt to intimidate and as a trophy of war.”
The IAPA recalled that in the past it had called on the U.S. government on repeated occasions to comply with the “Daniel Pearl Freedom of the Press Act” which expanded scrutiny of the state of press freedom in the countries included in the Department of State’s Annual Reports on Human Rights Practices and enables determination of the existence and/or continuity of those countries’ financial and technical aid programs.
That law, in effect since May 17, 2010, was issued in response to the death of Daniel Pearl, correspondent of The Wall Street Journal, kidnapped and decapitated in Pakistan in 2002, when he was investigating radical Islamic groups in that country.
Paolillo, editor of the Montevideo, Uruguay, weekly Búsqueda, offered “condolences to Foley’s family and colleagues” and added that “we are also concerned at the fate that other colleagues could face,” a reference to American reporter Steven Sotloff, contributor to Time and Foreign Policy magazines, shown in the video and held in captivity since August 2013 by the same group which threatened to execute him. Some 20 journalists have gone missing in Syria, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
The IAPA is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the defense and promotion of freedom of the press and of expression in the Americas. It is made up of more than 1,300 print publications from throughout the Western Hemisphere and is based in Miami, Florida. For more information please go to http://www.sipiapa.org.
