Watchdog warns EU leaders ‘weakening’ journalists after murder

– ‘Democratic crash’? –

The RSF chief also pointed to other central European leaders like Czech President Milos Zeman and governing parties in Hungary and Poland as creating a climate of hostility towards the media that undermines the security of journalists and press freedom.

Staunchly pro-Russian, Zeman once dubbed journalists “manure” and “superficial” before telling Russian President Vladimir Putin in China last May that “journalists should be liquidated”.

“The Czech president last year showed up at a press conference with a toy Kalashnikov in his hand labelled ‘for journalists’,” Deloire said of an incident last October.

Deloire also insisted that ruling parties in Poland and Hungary “have reduced pluralism” in public broadcasters, turning them into them mouthpieces for governing politicians.

“It is the responsibility of all European countries to avoid a situation where Poland and Hungary set a bad example for the rest of Europe,” he added.

“Investigative journalists who probe corruption, tax evasion or trafficking are threatened and unfortunately there are more and more politicians, heads of government who sometimes weaken investigative journalism,” he told AFP.

He added that after the murder of Galizia in Malta, “this is a new predictable murder of a journalist and we have to avoid a democratic crash in Europe.”

Reporters investigating the same story as Kuciak said they have obtained police protection since his shooting.

Meanwhile a rights group in Uzbekistan said that a journalist, believed to have endured the longest incarceration by a reporter worldwide, had finally been released.

The Ezgulik rights group, based in the capital Tashkent, said Yusuf Ruzimuradov had been freed from penal colony near the Uzbek capital last month after 19 years in jail on charges critics it dismissed as politically motivated.