Seven Indian journalists honoured by US memorial

Washington, May 6: Names of 27 journalists belonging to 14 countries, including seven from India, killed in the course of their duty were inscribed at the journalists8217; memorial at Freedom Park here. India had the largest entrants in the 8220;icons of freedom8221; list, comprising two television journalists in Kashmir falling victims to fundamentalist terrorism and five of a television company in Hyderabad killed in a botched murder attempt apparently aimed at their producer.

Sydan Shafi, a Doordarshan TV journalist, was fatally shot in the neck in March last year by terrorists in Srinagar, when he was proceeding towards his car from a telephone booth. Altaf Ahmed Faktoo, a Kashmiri Muslim reader also belonging to Doordarshan, was shot twice in the head last year by Muslim separatists at a hotel in Srinagar. They objected to his working for a state-owned television station. Five crew members of Eenadu television died when a bomb destroyed their vehicle on the outskirts of Hyderabad in November, when they werefilming a report. Police believe the intended target of the bombing was the programme producer, also an MLA, who was in another vehicle.

The victims were the channel8217;s news producer Jagdish Babu, news production assistant Raja Sekhar and cameraman Gangadhara Raju, S Krishna and Srinivasa Rao.

In an emotional address to the gathering on Tuesday, former Associated Press Middle East correspondent, held hostage by Lebanese terrorists for seven years, said, 8220;without a free press, no other freedom is safe.8221;

8220;Journalists do not like to give up their lives or get beaten, tortured or imprisoned by terrorists or by repressive regimes,8221; he added. The honour roll of the memorial now has 1,000 names of print and broadcast journalists and photographers. The memorial was dedicated on May 21, 1996, when it bore the names of 934 journalists who perished from 1812 through 1995. The first names to be added were those of 39 journalists who died in 1996. There are 149 coated glass panels mounted on the memorial, whichreflects the colours of the light spectrum with great precision, and the names of the journalists are embedded inside the glass.