Jamal Khashoggi’s fiancée invited to memorial ceremony in Bayeux
At the invitation of Reporters Without Borders (RSF), Hatice Cengiz will unveil the name of her late fiancé, Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, on the 2019 memorial stone at the War Reporters Memorial in Bayeux, in northern France, at a ceremony at 5 p.m. on 10 October. Organized as part of the Bayeux-Calvados-Normandy Awards for War Correspondents, this 13th annual ceremony will pay tribute to journalists killed in the past year.
Cengiz has not been able to bury her fiancé, who was brutally murdered in widely reported circumstances inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on 2 October 2018. But she will at least now be able to unveil his name on the 2019 memorial stone and deliver an address at this ceremony organized by RSF.
“Jamal Khashoggi’s murder was an attack on all journalists, on journalism in general and on the right of human beings to freedom of opinion and expression,” RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire said. “We stand alongside Hatice Cengiz and all the families who have suffered the pain of losing a loved-one for the sole reason that they were journalists. Their fight for the truth and against impunity is ours.”
Participants to include Lyra McKee’s friends
Friends of Lyra McKee, a local journalist who was fatally shot while covering disturbances in Derry, in Northern Ireland, on 18 April of this year, will attend the ceremony to pay tribute to this 29-year-old investigative reporter.
Those attending will also include relatives of Bakhtiyar Haddad, an Iraqi Kurdish reporter and fixer killed during the battle of Mosul on 19 June 2017, and relatives of Marc Filloux, a French journalist based in Vientiane, Laos, for AFP who disappeared in Cambodia in April 1974.
Ten journalists killed this year in Mexico
The many names engraved on the 2019 memorial stone include those of nine Mexican journalists: Jesús Alejandro Márquez Jiménez, Mario Leonel Gómez Sánchez, Rubén Pat, José Guadalupe Chan Dzib, Rafael Murúa Manríquez, Jesús Eugenio Ramos Rodríguez, Santiago Barroso, Telésforo Santiago Enríquez and Francisco Romero Díaz.
At least ten journalists have been killed in direct connection with their work this year in Mexico (ranked 144th in the latest World Press Freedom Index), making it the world’s deadliest country for the media in 2019, far ahead of both Afghanistan (with four killed this year) and Syria (also four killed).
