Friday, February 4, 2011

Foreign journalists targeted

Many journalists covering the deadly clashes in Cairo between supporters and opponents of the regime of Hosni Mubarak complained of increasing violence against them. In the streets of the capital, reporters have been attacked by men in civilian clothes in favor of President Mubarak, but also by anti-government protesters, more and more nervous.

Benjamin Barthe, Special Envoy of the World in Egypt, was questioned at length, without violence by the Egyptian secret service this morning at Suez: Listen! According to Benjamin Barthe, journalists are all asking themselves how to move, protect themselves, trying to work. Hotels around Tahrir Square has been emptied - more or less forcibly - by the henchmen of the Mubarak regime.

"One gets the impression that everything is done to create a camera around Tahrir Square. The risk exists, he says, that the coverage by the media revolution is scarce: Listen! Around Tahrir Square, emblematic of the revolt, plainclothes police and a mob loyal to the president directly target since Wednesday, February 2 journalists trying to cover the event.

A Greek journalist was stabbed and wounded in the leg by supporters of the president and a photojournalist who was with him was hit in the head. Three reporters from the Polish public television TVP were arrested by police on Thursday in Cairo. A team of star reporter of CNN, Anderson Cooper, was manhandled by supporters of President Mubarak gave them punched and kicked, but that soldiers stationed nearby did not intervene.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) was investigating Thursday afternoon, at least ten cases of journalists detained by police. According to the Commission, the Egyptian authorities have said that journalists were not arrested, but in "preventive detention". A member of a television crew was also struck Thursday near Tahrir Square, while doing a story with a colleague on the stores and banks to close down during the unrest.

Their equipment they were taken before being broken. A foreign journalist told to have been arrested by men in civilian and two soldiers and then taken to a dark alley where a man was tied up, shirtless, covered in bruises, with blood all over his body. "A young soldier told me in Arabic: 'Do you also want to die'?", Reported this reporter under cover of anonymity.

The violence prompted a burst of indignant reactions. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has "condemned" such acts, like the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), which accuses the Egyptian government intimidation. "The government uses a strategy to eliminate witnesses to his actions," the CPJ coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa, Mohamed Abdel Daïem.

This is a "concerted campaign" against foreign media, which threatens their fieldwork, denounces spokesman for American diplomacy, Philip J. Crowley, his Twitter account. But according to the Special Envoy of Mankind, Stone Barbancey, held two hours in a barracks before being placed under house arrest, it is the Egyptian journalists who pay the heaviest price.

"Militiamen [pro-Mubarak] we have delivered to the army, which took us to a barracks near the center of the city, evidenced by the journalist. They detained us there for two hours. We were well treated, all cases better than the Egyptians who were there, some were beaten with fists and batons.

" Anger against journalists also came from opponents. "Who are you? Can I have your papers?", Launched against a reporter of one showing anti-Mubarak, Riyadh Abdelmoneim place on Thursday morning. "Journalists have no business here. You've announced strategic information by revealing the number of opponents barricaded the place," he accused.

On Wednesday, a team from Al-Arabiya, accused by some protesters of being pro-government, had to flee to current activists furious on Tahrir Square, which are subtracted from Friday opponents of President Mubarak. Wednesday, Serge Dumont, Special Envoy of the Belgian daily Le Soir has been "manhandled", "beaten" and "taken away by unidentified people in plain clothes" while covering a pro-Mubarak.

The crowd violently attacked two journalists from the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet in a report in a poor neighborhood of Cairo. A team from the French channel France 2 has also been "taken to task Wednesday night at a checkpoint" when she returned from an assignment at Suez, according to Thierry Thuillier, chief editors of France-Televisions.

In addition, three journalists of France 24 were arrested late in the day in Cairo and are held by "military intelligence", according to information provided to a spokesman for the chain in Paris.

No comments:

Post a Comment