Father of a kidnapped woman journalist and several groups on Monday urged the United Nations to save reporters working in war-ridden Iraq who are increasingly becoming victims of abductors and soldiers.
Groups of journalists organised public meetings at the ongoing 61st session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights at Palais des Nations in the Swiss capital Geneva.
In one of the meetings organised by Reporters Sans Frontiers, Benoit Aubenas, father of French reporter Florence Aubenas, addressed journalists and human rights activists.
Earlier, a television channel showed footage of Florence Aubenas in a fragile condition pleading with the French government to save her from the clutches of her abductors.
She, along with her guide-interpreter Hussein Hanoun Al-Saadi, was abducted from Bahgdad on January 5, 2005. The abductors, who have not been identified, are demanding a ransom to set her free. She worked with French daily Liberation.
Her father Aubenas told the gathering: "When I saw my daughter on TV, I smiled. At least she was alive. I am happy that people are helping me to save her."
He is submitting a petition to the High Commissioner of Commission on Human Rights for UN intervention in getting her released.
George Gordon-Lennox, secretary general of the RSF, said: "We appeal to the abductors to set her free because she was performing her job as a journalist and nothing else. She was actually very anti-war."
"We also urge the government to take it seriously and take some steps in ensuring the safety of journalists working in Iraq."
Apart from the abductions, some journalists and cameramen have been killed in cross-firing and bombings. Some became targets of the firing by coalition forces as the latter termed it as "mistaken identity."
Press Emblem Campaign, a Geneva-based group of journalists and activists, organised a separate public meeting to highlight this issue.
According to PEC, three Romanian journalists -- Marie-Jeanne Ion and Sorin Miscovici of Prima TV and Ovidiu Ohanesian of Romania Libera newspaper -- are currently in captivity in Iraq.
PEC said 70 journalists and their assistants have been killed while reporting in Iraq since March 2003.
These journalists were from China, France, Egypt, Iraq, Italy, Indonesia, Pakistan, Philippines, Poland, Spain, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, UK and US.
PEC is campaigning to push a resolution in the United Nations to hold the governments responsible for the protection of journalists in such situations.
It aims to make the army more accountable during war. The organisation is debating to have a universally accepted emblem that journalists world over would carry on their shoulders as their identity proof while reporting from the war front. This is to ensure the army not to open fire at reporters mistaking them as enemies.
Hedayat Abdel Nabi, president of the PEC and outgoing president of the Geneva Association of UN Correspondents, said: "We are more concerned about freelance journalists as they don't have anybody to back them. The situation in Iraq and Israel is very bad and we need some protection to work without fear."
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