In a country that has seen years of war and experienced a painful shift to democracy, it’s heartening to know that some of the people are using their voices to call for justice for the free press.
Articles from several major media organizations show photographs of the peaceful protest.
Iraqi civil society protests for greater press freedom. (source: AFP)
According to Reporters Without Borders (RSF), a protest of “hundreds of journalists, academics, performers, politicians and ordinary Iraqis” took place earlier today in Baghdad’s for journalist Ahmed Abd Al-Hussein of the newspaper Al-Sabah. RSF says he’s been the target of death threats from a Shiite political party.
The protest was organized by the Journalistic Freedom Observatory and covered by local and international media. The organization, according to its website:
“We are a group of journalists and media men bearing the responsibility of monitoring all kinds and reasons of the violations against the journalists and media men, and taking all possible measures to confront the reasons of those violations not only through the statements of denouncement, but through taking constants steps to stop those violations through commissioning lawyers and legal men to pursue the violations and to sue the violators regardless of their ranks or positions, even though, we can sue them to the international courts. The JFO will follow up the violations through its wide network of observers on the countrywide.”
RSF said that a statement issued at the end of the demonstration called for:
Read the 11 June release about the threats against Ahmed Abd Al-Hussein from RSF here.
