The Director-General of UNESCO, Audrey Azoulay, today denounced the killing of Nigerian cameraman Ikechukwu Onubogu, whose body was found in the town of Obosi in the state of Anambras on 15 November.
“I condemn the killing of Ikechukwu Onubogu,” said the Director-General. “The perpetrators of this crime must be brought to justice in order to preserve freedom of expression, enshrined in both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights. Governments must also protect journalists so as to prevent bloodshed from depriving the public of its right to access information.”
Neither his family nor his colleagues at Anambra Broadcasting Service (ABS) had seen or heard from Ikechukwu Onubogu since he had left home in the afternoon of 12 November.
In the spirit of Article 1 of the UNESCO Constitution, the Director-General of UNESCO issues statements on violations of press freedoms and condemning the killing of media workers, in line with its action to take forward the UN Plan of Action on the Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity.These statements are posted on a dedicated webpage, UNESCO condemns the killing of journalists
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Media contact: Sylvie Coudray, s.coudray@unesco.org, +33 (0)1 45 68 42 12
UNESCO is the United Nations agency with a mandate to defend freedom of expression and press freedom. Article 1 of its Constitution requires the Organization to “further universal respect for justice, for the rule of law and for the human rights and fundamental freedoms which are affirmed for the peoples of the world, without distinction of race, sex, language or religion, by the Charter of the United Nations.” To realize this the Organization is requested to “collaborate in the work of advancing the mutual knowledge and understanding of peoples, through all means of mass communication and to that end recommend such international agreements as may be necessary to promote the free flow of ideas by word and image…”