A Day Without News?

We are delighted to share the news that four French journalists, kidnapped in Syria over 10 months ago, have been released.

Nicolas Hénin, Pierre Torres, Edouard Elias and Didier François were found safe and well on the Turkish border.

A plane carrying the four from Turkey touched down at a military base in northern France early Sunday where they were transferred by helicopter to Villacoublay air base southwest of Paris and met by President Francois Hollande.

Our very best wishes to them and to their families.

 

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February 22nd 2014, marks the one year anniversary of A Day Without News? and two years since the deaths of our colleagues Marie Colvin and Remi Ochlik in Homs, Syria. 

 

It was their deaths at the hands of the Syrian Authorities that inspired us to launch the campaign to lobby for more support for our colleagues.

We set three objectives and with your support and that of our community we have achieved a great deal in just one year.

We ask you to continue to help us raise awareness and support our goal to end impunity and bring perpetrators to justice.

Register your support here.

Our thanks to our colleagues at CPJ and RSF

Watch the UN Secretary-General's message of support for A Day Without News?.

 

What We Want To Achieve

 

The purpose of the campaign, which already has wide support across the international news media community, is:

  • to draw sharper attention to the growing numbers of journalists who have been killed and injured in armed conflict, in some cases as a result of direct targeting by the belligerents;

 

  • to develop a public diplomacy, institutional and legal agenda to combat this more effectively; and

 

  • to investigate and collect evidence in support of prosecutable cases in this area.

The ultimate goal is for A Day Without News? to generate grassroots support within the community that will further the work of the Committee to Protect Journalists , Reporters Without Borders, Human Rights Watch, and other invaluable organizations who are dedicated to this issue. A Day Without News? is working closely with these organizations to ensure that this campaign serves their missions – hopefully by building public support through publicity; increasing pressure for change through diplomacy; and facilitating the identification, investigation and prosecution of war crimes committed against journalists.

 

“My family is so deeply appreciative of the efforts of Aidan Sullivan and the A Day Without News ? campaign, for raising awareness not only of my sister’s murder at the hands of the Syrian government but of the growing numbers of journalists and photographers who are targeted in war zones throughout the world every day. I am particularly touched that February 22, the anniversary of Marie’s death, would be selected as the day to launch this critically important effort.”
— Cat Colvin - Marie Colvin’s Sister
“It’s really important to show the world not as we imagine it but the world as it is: beautiful, amazing but so, so vicious. And photographers and journalists do this every day, every hour. Some of them die for this. We have to make the general public sensitive to the importance of the press. One year ago, on February 22nd , Rémi Ochlik died in Syria doing his job, and because he was doing his job, he was targeted, and still, nobody has been accused or arrested. The murder of journalists and photographers carries on with impunity. Rémi Ochlik’s family and I are really touched by the A Day Without News? campaign, we support this project because we want reporters to go everywhere, and especially we need them to come back safe and sound to continue their work.”
— Emilie Blachere - Rémi Ochlik’s girlfriend

Register your support here