ARCHIVES: Iraq
Attempts of governments in the Middle East to censor news coverage of protests remains unabated. In Yemen, men stormed the Journalists' Syndicate on Saturday, and in Iraq, journalists demanded apologies from the military after a crackdown on the press on Friday, and Baghdad Operations Command offered the apologies on Sunday, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). On Saturday at around 11 a.m., three men in plainclothes arrived in a marked police vehicle and... MORE
The Committee to protect Journalists documented additional attacks Friday in Iraq, Yemen, and Libya as journalists tried to cover anti-government protests. Iraqi authorities cracked down on media: Security forces stormed a satellite TV office, detained dozens of journalists, and confiscated equipment, according to local journalists and news reports. In Yemen, at least four journalists were detained today, according to local journalists, and Al-Jazeera reported that its crew was prevented from... MORE
An armed raid was carried out Wednesday morning on the Baghdad headquarters of the Journalistic Freedoms Observatory (JFO), partner organisation of Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) in Iraq, in which all of the JFO’s computers and archives were stolen “A dozen gunmen belonging to private security forces burst into our office near Al-Fardous Square in central Baghdad this morning at the time of Fajr prayer [6:30 a.m.],” JFO director Ziyad Al-Ajili said. “They broke... MORE
A destructive attack was carried out by 50 masked gunmen Sunday on the headquarters of Naliya Radio and Television (NRT) in the compound known as “German Village” in Sulaimaniya, in northern Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region, to prevent it from continuing to cover unrest in the city. After firing at NRT’s guards, wounding one of them, the gunmen smashed all the broadcasting equipment and then set fire to the building. Launched on February 17 by the company Naliya, it was Iraqi Kurdistan’s... MORE
Press freedom groups have condemned journalist Hilal Al-Ahmadi’s murder Thursday in the northern city of Mosul. Ahmadi, who worked for two local weeklies, the Mosul Echo and Iraqiyoun , was gunned down outside his home. “We are extremely shocked and dismayed by Ahmadi’s death,” Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) secretary-general Jean-François Julliard said. “The murders of journalists in Iraq are not letting up and generalized impunity is fuelling the cycle of... MORE
Authorities in Bahrain and Yemen have escalated their physical attack on the press in order to censor coverage of spreading anti-government protests, the Committee to protect Journalists said Thursday. Also, in Iraq, at least two journalists were attacked by guards for the Kurdistan Democratic Party's building, local journalists told CPJ. "Governments throughout the Middle East and North Africa cannot deny their citizens coverage of these momentous events across the region," said Mohamed Abdel... MORE
President of the Kurdistan Democratic Party Massoud Barzani has announced in an interview with the pro-KDP daily Khebat that he is to withdraw a complaint made by his party against two columnists on the non partisan newspaper Awene , Marwan Wrya Qani’ and Aras Fatah , over their article that appeared in June 2010, “What did the president of the autonomous region of Kurdistan say?” Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF), which has several times expressed its concern at a... MORE
Massoud Barzani, the president of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) voiced clear support for media freedom during his party’s congress on December 13 but in recent months more and more lawsuits have been brought against the Kurdish media, and not just the independent ones. Newspaper editors nowadays seem to be spending their time in the corridors outside courtrooms. In a ruling issued on December 12, a court in Erbil fined magazine Rega 35... MORE
Journalist and presenter on the satellite TV channel al-Anbar Omar Rassim al-Qayssi died on Sunday of injuries he suffered in a booby-trap car bomb in al-Anbar city centre, Ramadi, 167 km east of Baghdad). Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) hopes that an investigation will be opened and those responsible will be brought to trial. The press freedom organisation said it was sickened by the practice of suicide bombings designed to kill a maximum number of civilians... MORE
Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) and the Journalistic Freedoms Observatory (JFO), its partner organization in Iraq, have condemned the threat of a wave of Al-Qaeda bombings against news media that has just been reported by the Iraqi interior ministry. Asking not to be named, a ministry official said on November 30 that Al-Qaeda was planning a campaign of car-bombings against ministries, universities, institutes and news media including the Al-Iraqiya, Al-Farat and... MORE
Pages
