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New York, April 6, 2005—The Committee to Protect Journalists said today that it is alarmed by the more than weeklong detention in Iraq of a journalist working for the Dubai-based satellite news channel Al-Arabiya. Iraqi forces detained Wael Issam, a Palestinian cameraman on assignment for the station, at Baghdad International Airport on March 28, according…
MARCH 28 , 2005 Posted: April 7, 2005 Wael Issam, Al-Arabiya HARASSED, IMPRISONED Iraqi forces detained Issam, a Palestinian cameraman working for the satellite news channel Al-Arabiya, at Baghdad International Airport, the station said. Issam was en route to the station’s headquarters in Dubai.
Remember 1989? The collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of democracy and democratic institutions in the old Communist bloc, including Mother Russia, inspired a new generation of journalists in places where a free press had been a state crime. Other journalists in other places, such as Central and South America, Southeast Asia, and…
OverviewBy Joel Campagna The conflict in Iraq led to a harrowing number of press attacks in 2004, with local journalists and media support workers primarily in the line of fire. Twenty-three journalists and 16 support staff—drivers, interpreters, fixers, and guards—were killed while on the job in Iraq in 2004. In all, 36 journalists and 18…
Egypt For the first time in years, Egyptian journalists are cautiously optimistic about prospects for press freedom. President Hosni Mubarak, whose record on press issues has been spotty since he took power in 1981, proposed decriminalizing press offenses as public debate about political reforms gained steam. Journalists, for their part, showed greater willingness to take…
IraqFor the second consecutive year, Iraq was the most dangerous place in the world to work as a journalist, and the conflict there remained one of the most deadly in recent history for the media. Twenty-three journalists were killed in action in 2004, along with 16 media workers.
Israel and the Occupied Territories, including the Palestinian Authority TerritoriesWith Iraq dominating media security concerns in the Middle East, journalists covering the region’s other main flash point quietly faced a familiar array of hazards on the job. The occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip remained two of the most dangerous and unpredictable assignments for journalists…
Saudi ArabiaSaudi Arabia’s press is among the most heavily censored in the Arab world, but it has shown occasional signs of life since September 11, 2001. Some Saudi newspapers have demonstrated unusual boldness, publishing tough critiques of religious militancy and low-level government mismanagement and calling for reform.
Sudan Sudan garnered international headlines in 2004 due to widespread atrocities and ethnic cleansing in Darfur, an impoverished region in the west of the country. Since February 2003, government-backed militias, known as janjaweed, have killed tens of thousands of people and displaced close to 2 million in a counterinsurgency campaign against rebel groups.
YemenYemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh said in May that he would work to decriminalize press offenses. Yet three months later, a prominent editor who published opinion pieces opposing the president’s handling of a bloody armed rebellion was sentenced to a year in prison, and his newspaper was suspended for six months.