14 Apr 2010 | Index Index, Middle East and North Africa, minipost, Uncategorized
After immense pressure from the right-wing on Sunday, the Israeli bookstore chain Tzomet Sfarim has stopped selling a leftist political manifesto heavily critical of the settler movement. In The National Left, the authors call settlers “messianic madmen” and brainwashed “zombies”. The company claims they pulled the book not for political reasons, but because it “hurts the feelings of some of our customers”.
Meanwhile cameraman and AFP correspondent Hazem Bader was arrested by Israeli forces in Hebron after he refused to stop filming a protest. Fifteen protesters were also arrested for not leaving the closed military area. Bader was detained for three hours then released after AFP intervened.
14 Apr 2010 | Index Index, minipost
US Defense Secretary Robert Gates has criticised Wikileaks, over its release of a video showing a 2007 US helicopter attack that killed 12 people in Baghdad. Gates said the videos released by the group were out of context and provided an incomplete picture of the battlefield, comparing it to war as seen “through a soda straw.” “These people can put out anything they want, and they’re never held accountable for it. There’s no before and there’s no after,” Gates said.
14 Apr 2010 | Index Index, minipost
On 11 April, Luis Antonio Chévez, host of a musical programme on Radio W105, was shot to death in the country’s business capital San Pedro Sula. His cousin, 20, was also killed in the incident. The motive for the killings is unknown, but police have ruled out a robbery, given that a silver bracelet and a “considerable amount of cash” were found among the victims’ belongings. Chévez is the sixth media worker assassinated in Honduras in the last two months.
14 Apr 2010 | Index Index, minipost
A journalist was knocked unconscious during an attack by police officers and security guards. Orlando Rucana Cuba, editor of La Revista newspaper and director of the news program Canal 27’s ITN programme, was beaten while filming a group of municipal police and security guards evicting street vendors in Huaraz, Ancash province.
