Iraq

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has expressed concern over the continuing wave of press freedom violations in Iraq, and reiterated its appeal to the Iraqi parliament to pass a law protecting journalists. “Many journalists and media have been the target of physical attacks or lawsuits since the March 7 parliamentary elections,” Paris-based RSF said. “The threats come from both the security forces...

Anti-riot police assaulted journalists covering two different protests in Sulaimaniya in Iraqi Kurdistan on Saturday and Tuesday, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Several journalists told the New York-based CPJ on Tuesday that police prevented them on Saturday from covering clashes between security forces and students who had taken to the streets to protest the Ministry of...

Iraqi journalist Omar Ibrahim Al-Jabouri, the satellite TV station Al-Rasheed’s head of public relations, lost both of his legs Tuesday as a result of a targetted car-bombing in Baghdad, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). A total of three people were seriously injured when the bomb, attached to the underside of Al-Jabouri’s car, exploded as he set off this morning for work with two...

Disturbing video footage showing a 2007 US military airstrike that killed about a dozen Iraqis in eastern Baghdad, including a Reuters cameraman and assistant, was released Tuesday by WikiLeaks, a website that publishes sensitive leaked documents. The video raises questions about the actions of US military forces and the thoroughness and transparency of the investigation that followed, the...

An assassination attempt was made Sunday against Muaid al-Lami, head of the Iraqi Journalists’ Syndicate, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said. Four unidentified gunmen in a car intercepted and opened fire in Baghdad’s Al-Qadisiyya district on a two-car convoy carrying al-Lami and four other individuals, according to news reports. Al-Lami told New York-based CPJ that he was not...

Political rivalry and tension prompted by the March 7 legislative elections in Iraqi Kurdistan resulted in a wave of violence against independent and opposition journalists in the days preceding the election and on election day itself. Journalists describe it as the most harrowing period since the US invasion of Iraq in April 2003. “I am really concerned about these press freedom violations, which...

“You have guns, we have pens,” was the message that the Sulaymaniyah-based independent newspaper Hawlati (Citizen) printed on an otherwise blank front page on February 24 in a bold protest against a spate of threats, harassment and physical violence against journalists in Iraqi Kurdistan in the run-up to a parliamentary election on March 6. Hawlati’s front page is just one example of the growing...

Iraqi reporter Hussam Daoud al-Eqabi, who was seized by unidentified armed men on Wednesday, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Al-Eqbi is a political reporter for Al-Ahed, a radio station in Kirkuk affiliated with radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr. According to Abed Abu Zahra, head of Al-Ahed, four unidentified gunmen abducted Hussam Dawood al-Eqabi, 22, in front of his...

Iraqi photographer, Ibrahim Jassam, of Reuters, who had been held by the US military since his arrest on September 1, 2008, was released Wednesday. Jassam was arrested by the US military in Mahmudiyah, 30 km south of Baghdad, and was held at Camp Cropper, near Baghdad airport. Iraq’s central criminal court on November 30, 2008 said he had no case to answer and must be released, but the US army...

An Iraqi government plan to impose restrictive rules on broadcast news media represents an alarming return to authoritarianism, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said. New York-based CPJ denounced the rules and called on Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his government to abandon their repressive plan. CPJ’s review of the plan found rules that fall well short of international...