PARLIAMENTARY EARLY DAY MOTION
INVESTIGATION OF JOURNALISTS' DEATHS (22 April 2007)

That this House condemns attacks on journalists and seeks to end impunity for such killings; welcomes Government support for UN Security Council Resolution 1738; congratulates the International News Safety Institute (INSI) on its comprehensive report Killing The Messenger, on journalists' deaths in the last decade; commends INSI's safety recommendations to journalists and news organisations; notes that INSI urges all militaries to follow the lead on military-media operations in wartime given in the 2006 UK Ministry of Defence Green Book following discussions with INSI and the News Safety Group; endorses INSI's recommendations to the military that embedding journalists inside military units has no legitimacy without reporting by independent journalists and that the media's presence in battle must be communicated swiftly to military units in that area; endorses INSI's insistence that full and open enquiries into media deaths be held as soon as practical, with prosecutions where appropriate, and that failure to act on the killing of journalists allows `criminals to dictate what citizens read and see'; urges the Government to respond positively to INSI's global report; and further urges the Government to help resolve the unlawful killing of ITN's Terry Lloyd in Iraq in 2003 and to press for the re-opening of the UN's investigations into the killings of journalists in Timor-Leste, including British citizens Malcolm Rennie and Brian Peters in 1975 and Sander Thoenes of the Financial Times in 1999.

Sponsored by:
Lord Foster of Bath (Liberal Democrat)