OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media Dunja Mijatovic has called on OSCE participating states on International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists to step up their investigations, identify and prosecute those who commit crimes against journalists.

"Authorities throughout the OSCE region are failing to take action to reduce the high number of attacks against journalists, and they are failing to confront the issue of impunity. (…)"The grim facts are that nine out of every ten murders of journalists are never solved and that the vast majority of physical attacks against journalist are not investigated. These statistics alone show that we can never give up and never give in to the fight for journalists' safety and media freedom," Mijatovic said on the OSCE site on Wednesday.

The long list of murdered journalists in the OSCE region in whose cases the perpetrators still remain at large includes, among many others, Slavko Curuvija (1999), Georgy Gongadze (2000), Martin O'Hagan (2001), Milan Pantic (2001), Veronika Cherkasova (2004), Dusko Jovanovic (2004), Paul Klebnikov (2004), Elmar Huseynov (2005), Anna Politkovskaya (2006), Alisher Saipov (2007), Hrant Dink (2007), Natalya Estemirova (2009), Khadzhimurad Kamalov (2011), Akhmednabi Akhmednabiyev (2013), and Pavel Sheremet (2016).

"The names of these brave journalists are not only proof of the failure in safeguarding members of the media, they are also evidence of the low or even non-existent political will to tackle the issue of impunity," Mijatovic said.

As reported, well-known Belarusian journalist Sheremet was killed in an explosion of a car downtown Kyiv on July 20, 2016. The blast occurred when Sheremet was driving the car.