Arab world: A zone of UNFREEDOM

MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA
Journalists Killed = Iraq (8), Lebanon (1), Libya (1)

The Middle East and North Africa is one of the most troubling regions in the world for press freedom, and events in recent months have proved no exception. The continued slaughter of journalists in Iraq, intolerance and incarceration in Iran, and murders in both Lebanon and Libya have made this region the bloodiest in the world for journalists in the past six months.

Ongoing violence and instability in Iraq have made the country the most dangerous place in the world for media. At least eight journalists have been murdered in the past six months, bringing the yearly total thus far to nineteen. Most of the victims were local journalists, many falling victim to attacks by insurgents.

In September alone, three journalists were killed, two in the northern city of Mosul, and one in Basra. On 16 September, Hind Ismail, a reporter for the daily newspaper As-Saffir, was abducted by unidentified assailants in Mosul. Her body was found the next morning with a single bullet wound in the head. On 20 September, Firas Maadidi, the Mosul bureau chief for the same daily, was gunned down in front of his home. In the southern city of Basra, Fakher Haydar Al-Tamimi, an Iraqi journalist who worked for several foreign news media including the New York Times, was kidnapped and shot in execution style on 19 September.

The replacement of reformist president Mohammad Khatami by the conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran’s presidential elections in June has done little to give hope to the country’s struggling independent media. Iran’s most prominent political prisoner, investigative journalist Akbar Ganji, remains in jail. There has been no word of his condition since he was returned to prison on 3 September following a two-month hunger strike that landed him in hospital.

A few other journalists have been more fortunate. Cyber-dissidents Mojtaba Lotfi andi Mohamad Reza Nasab Abdolah were released from prison at the end of August after spending over six months in prison. In June, Yosef Azizi Banitrouf, a prominent journalist and human rights activist, was released on bail. The journalist had been detained without charge since his arrest in April for participating in a press conference.

Social agitation in the tiny kingdom of Bahrain has brought out the less tolerant side of the normally accommodating government. In the past six months, at least three bloggers and Internet users affiliated with the website Bahrain Online (http://www.bahrainonline.org) have been detained and released.

Similarly in Yemen, social unrest appears to have led to direct reprisals from the government in recent months. Premeditated attacks on the press have also been recorded. In July, following a fuel price hike that sparked riots, security forces arrested a number of journalists covering the events and attacked others, confiscating their cameras and film.

Also in July, Yemeni correspondents for foreign media were barred from sending news reports using Yemeni TV satellite stations, despite agreements to the contrary. In the same month, Hajei Al-Jehafi, managing editor of the independent daily An-Nahar, narrowly escaped injury when a booby-trapped letter exploded in his face.

Initial high hopes concerning the political future of Lebanon in the wake of the withdrawal of Syrian troops and the June parliamentary elections were dampened by the 2 June murder of popular political columnist Samir Kassir.

The An-Nahar journalist was killed by a car bomb. In a similar attack, May Chidiac, an anchorwoman with the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation, was seriously wounded in a car bomb attack in September. The journalist, one of Lebanon’s most outspoken during Syria’s occupation, lost two limbs and suffers from serious burns from the attack.

Egypt’s first democratic presidential elections in September put the country’s predominately state-controlled media to the test. As expected, coverage was found to be biased in favour of President Mubarak, although opposition candidates were given print space and airtime. Aside from a few independent newspapers, including the Arab-language Al Masri Al Youm, the government owns and operates all broadcast television stations, radio is restricted to entertainment, and the country’s three leading dailies are state controlled, with their editors appointed by the president.

In Algeria, the government has continued to employ defamation laws to crack down on opposition journalists over the past six months, rounding off a thoroughly disappointing year for press freedom in the country. Algeria’s most prestigious editor, Mohamed Benchicou, remains behind bars after more than a year in jail on trumped up charges. Threats, censorship, denial of press accreditation, arrests and prison sentences have become the daily lot of many journalists in the country.

The gruesome murder of a journalist in Libya in June shone rare light into a country that is normally shrouded in darkness due the lack of any independent media. On 2 June, the body of Daif al-Ghazal al-Shuhaibi was found in the eastern city of Benghazi. His fingers had been severed and his body had multiple bruises and stab wounds. He had also been shot. For the past year, the journalist had written for the UK-based web newspaper Libya, in which he had published articles criticising Libya’s governing party, the Movement of Revolutionary Committees (MRC).

With the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) set to take place in Tunis in November, Tunisia’s attempt to prove to the world its suitability to hold a UN meeting, that among other subjects, discusses issues of access to information and freedom of expression, remains as absurd as ever. The blocking of websites, consistent harassment of journalists, and banning of meetings of prominent civil society organisations over the past six months is consistent with President Ben Ali’s hostile stance toward freedom of expression. According to reports, there are more than 600 prisoners of opinion currently in jail in the country.