Diaspora journalists

Diaspora journalists, journalists in the diaspora. They are not journalists covering the diaspora, like when we say, war journalists or science journalists that describe the journalists and their areas of coverage. This time they are, in fact, in the heart of the diaspora, part of the teeming masses traversing the globe in search of a better life. But in the case of the so-called diaspora journalists, they are seeking safety and sanctuary to elude the iron hands of those who seek to silence them in their homelands.

“Diaspora journalists increasingly targeted by home countries” was an Agence France-Presse (AFP) news report that came out in the Inquirer last week. Targeted outside of their home countries, if I may add.

Exiles, asylum seekers, fugitives, these journalists have become because they had found the truth and exposed what they knew. And now they have become the hunted both at home and abroad. The power of the pen versus the power of the high and mighty.

The word diaspora comes from the Greek word “diaspeirein” which means to scatter. Dispersion and dispersal are derived from it. The word goes back to ancient times and referred to the scattering of the Jews, but in present days it simply means a movement of people away from their established or ancestral homelands. We often refer to the phenomenon of millions of Filipino overseas workers (OFWs) in distant lands as a diaspora or diasporic, to my wild imagination, our way of Filipinizing the planet. The reason may not always be financial but for most if not all OFWs, it is. For many from troubled nations, they could have myriad reasons—politically induced war and strife, famine, fear, poverty, hopelessness. A diaspora does not always begin in refugee camps or border crossings.

There is something heartbreaking about people leaving or being forced out of the land of their birth and starting life anew in strange lands that may not always be hospitable to aliens in distress. It used to be that if journalists found themselves in the diaspora, it would be because they were reporting about it, hunting for stories, listening to voices and giving names and faces to the people in the diaspora so that the world may know. A noble task. That may not always be the case anymore. Journalists, though not in large numbers, have become part of the diaspora for reasons not quite like those of the rest. These journalists are in the crosshairs of the armed and dangerous.

While these journalists are now part of the diasporic phenomenon, of the teeming masses crisscrossing the globe in search of their “promised land,” I still would like to think of these journos as a class of their own. The term “diaspora journalists” has a painful ring to it. What fearsome might, what brute power has driven them to flee? Unlike the countless others in the diaspora who can settle in new places they can finally call home, diaspora journalists cannot claim safety outside of their countries because there are forces out to silence them. There is no safety in exile.

Last week, United States-based rights group Freedom House issued a report “A Light That Cannot Be Extinguished: Exiled Journalism and Transnational Repression.” AFP’s news lead: “Authoritarian states are increasingly targeting journalists working in exile as part of government reprisal campaigns against dissidents living outside their countries.” “Increasingly” denotes “an uptick in so-called ‘transnational repression,’ which can target all kinds of citizens living abroad …” Freedom House reported: “As attacks on free and independent media increase globally, more and more journalists are being forced to work from exile, and are increasingly facing the threat of transnational repression in their new homes abroad … Some, like Jamal Khashoggi, have been assassinated.” Khashoggi, a Saudi, wrote a column for the Washington Post. His killing inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018 shocked journalists around the world. Transnational repression—new words in the human rights lexicon.

I downloaded the Freedom House report where it said that from 2014 to 2023, 112 incidents of “physical transnational repression” against journalists have been committed by 26 governments including China, Russia, Belarus, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Cambodia. But these could only be the tip of the iceberg. This reminds me of the warning to escapees, “You can run but you can’t hide.” Freedom House has released results of a global survey on transnational repression, “Out of Sight, Not Out of Reach.” In the Philippines, media practitioners who get in the way are simply felled with a bullet or two even right inside their own homes—or broadcast booth. In Pinoymoviespeak, “isang bala ka lang.”

From Freedom House president Michael J. Abramowitz: “The latest chapter in the growing authoritarian playbook is to go after exiled journalists who tell the truth about a regime’s priorities, performance, and misdeeds. Journalists are facing the threat of assassination, intimidation, and coercion, simply for doing their jobs.”

More than a job, journalism is a calling.

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