The Mesopotamian Women Journalists Platform (MKGP) denounced the killing of three women journalists in the span of two days in Mexico and the West Bank, Özgür Politika newspaper reported on Wednesday.
Monday saw local outlet El Veraz’s director Yessenia Mollinedo Falconi and camerawoman Sheila Johana Garcia Olivera shot dead in Velacruz, Mexico, according to the BBC. The two women were shot at point-blank range.
Al-Jazeera correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh was killed by Israeli forces on Wednesday in Jenin while covering Israeli army raids in the West Bank, the Qatari network announced. The Palestinian-American journalist was wearing a press vest and standing with other journalists when she was targeted, it said.
“Authoritarian regimes in many parts of the world today and their policies of war, oppression and censorship make journalism more difficult but also more important,” the MKGP, founded by Kurdish women journalists, said in a statement.
Patriarchal policies of war target women first, and Akleh was targeted for her identity as a woman and for being a journalist, the platform said.
“Conditions of war and conflict demand resilience and vigor, and women who take the lead in this struggle are unfortunately targeted. We will continue to fight for press freedom and a world where journalists are not murdered or arrested on the job,” they said.
The death of El Veraz journalists raised the number of journalists killed in Mexico in 2022 to 11.
According to the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate (PJS), an estimated 50 Palestinian journalists have been killed since 2000, six of them in occupied Palestinian territory.