About Journalists help Journalists

In many regions of the world journalism is a high-risk profession.
Every year, many professional journalists are murdered while doing their work.
Every year, several hundred others are imprisoned; many are tortured, injured or expelled from home. Only the most spectacular cases are reported to the public. Many more remain in the dark, as well as the fate of these colleagues and their families.

JHJ was founded in 1993 in Munich, Germany to commemorate Egon Scotland, a journalist and colleague from the "Sueddeutsche Zeitung", who was killed during the war in the former Yugoslavia.

JHJ is an independent, non-profit-organisation, founded in order to help journalists, their wives and children who are in danger, threatened by totalitarian governments, civil war or any other political or religious motivated violence. They receive financial and medical assistance, goods for daily living and special sponsorship for their children. JHJ delivers also technical support by replacing destroyed equipment: personal computers, type-writers, cameras,... Assistance is restricted to those who are without any help by official agencies.

For more detailed information please follow the links on our website.

In its early years, the work of JHJ concentrated on Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia and Kosovo. In more than 150 cases JHJ helped colleagues and their families to survive the historical change in the territory of former Yugoslavia. Some who were forced to leave Bosnia by violence returned home with the assistance of JHJ. JHJ also promotes the publication of the concerned authors in the German media.

JHJ is a network of more than 100 journalists from Germany, Austria, Belgium and Italy with contacts around the world. In recent years, work was extended to Algeria, Tunisia, Turkey, Haiti, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Russia, Byelorussia and Iraq.

JHJ works in cooperation with "Reporters sans Frontières", with the "Committee to Protect Journalists", the "Rory-Peck-Foundation", "Amnesty International", " The Hamburg Foundation for the Politically Persecuted" and the representative for the media of the CSCE.

The voluntary work of JHJ is supported by donations and contributions of members. JHJ has the status of a charity organisation.

Munich 2007