10 Apr 2012 | Index Index, minipost
Unidentified gunmen have brutally murdered a Somalian radio journalist. Mahad Salad Aden, a well known and well respected journalist for Shabelle Media Network, was murdered on 5 April at around 5.30pm by a group of masked men. This attack is the fourth of its kind against journalists affiliated with the Shabelle Media Network, and Adan is the fourth journalist to be killed in Somalia this year. Shabelle Media believe that such attacks are carried out by “certain groups across the warring factions in Somalia” in an attempt to force the network to serve their political objectives.
10 Apr 2012 | Index Index, minipost
A Nigerian magistrate ordered the arrest and detention of around 10 journalists on 4 April. A group of reporters who were covering the verdict from a coroner’s inquest were arrested after a woman, believed to be a prosecutor or a social worker, ordered journalists to leave the premises. The journalists attempted to explain why they were there to the woman, but arguments ensued. During the arguments, Magistrate Oshoniyi ordered the immediate arrests of the journalists. Following their arrest, the journalists were assaulted, beaten and harassed by police.
10 Apr 2012 | Middle East and North Africa
Two arrests linked to Facebook posts critical of the Palestinian Authority (PA) have spurred a variety of human rights and media freedom groups to call on the PA to stop harassing their critics.
On Wednesday 28 March, Palestinian Preventative Security Forces detained lecturer Ismat Abdul-Khaleq “after they read a quote on her Facebook page accusing President Mahmoud Abbas of being a traitor and demanding he resigns,” lawyer Issam Abdeen of the Palestinian rights group al-Haq told the Associated Press.
Defaming a public official is illegal in the West Bank. As happened in the recent case of detained journalist Yousef Al Shayeb, Abdul-Khaleq was told that she will be held for two weeks while the Public Prosecutor’s office “searches for evidence”. According to the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, she is being held in solitary confinement.
On Sunday 1 April, journalist Tariq Khamis was arrested after discussing Abdul-Khaleq’s arrest on Facebook. Khamis told the website Electronic Intifada that he believed his arrest was connected to an article he wrote about youth groups that were critical of the authorities. He told Reuters that during his three-hour interrogation, “I was questioned on my work as a journalist, and they confiscated the files on my laptop.” He added “the authorities are afraid of journalism.”
Human Rights Watch, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Al-Haq and Reporteurs Sans Frontieres have all expressed their concern at the way critical voices are being targeted and detained by the PA.
The authorities emphasise that the judiciary and the government are two separate entities, but criticism of the authorities can result in incursions by security and judicial sources. Adnan Dmeiri, the spokesman of the security services which detained and questioned both Abdul-Khaleq and Khamis, claims “freedom of expression stops at defamation”. Yet his following statement, that “any citizen can respond to insults and baseless accusations with a lawsuit” does not hold true. Due process has not been followed and citizens are detained by the state while government bodies search for evidence against them. Even if Abdul-Khaleq, Khamis or even Yousef Al Shayeb are never formally charged, a message has been sent to PA’s critics in order to intimidate them. Its actions undermine its efforts to present themselves as a democratic body in a bid for further recognition and foreign investment.
Ruth Michaelson is a freelance journalist based in Ramallah. Follow her on Twitter @_Ms_R
10 Apr 2012 | Middle East and North Africa
Anti-government protesters clashed with police in the streets of Tunis over the weekend as they attempted to defy a ban prohibiting demonstrations on the capital’s main avenue.
Protesters raising anti-government slogans took to the streets on 9 April to celebrate Martyrs’ Day in commemoration of those killed by French troops on the same date in 1938, but were soon faced with a tough crack down from police.
Tear gas and batons were used to disperse protesters who were in defiance of the ban, introduced by the Interior Ministry on 28 March, prohibiting demonstrations on Habib Bourguiba Avenue. On 14 January 2011, thousands of protesters gathered on the emblematic avenue to call for the fall of the regime of Ben Ali the emblematic avenue.
While covering the Martyrs’ Day protest and the clashes between protesters and police, bloggers and journalists got a taste of police brutality. Monji Khadhraoui, General Secretary of the National Syndicate for Tunisian Journalists (SNJT) told Index on Censorship that 13 journalists from both national and foreign press were assaulted.
Meriem Ben Ghazi, a young journalist for Tunisia Live was verbally abused and threatened by three police officers in plain clothes, whilst using an iPad to live stream the protest on the interent. She was assaulted even though she had her press card with her, and told police that she was a journalist.
Ben Ghazi to Index: “one police officer said to me ‘If you do not go home, we will beat you.’ They struck the Ipad with their batons, and they also tried to arrest our cameraman. We were not the only ones. We saw many journalists being assaulted.”
Julie Schneider, the Tunis correspondent for the French newspaper Le Point was also assaulted, despite telling police that she was a journalist. In a testimony published on the website of the newspaper, Schneider described the abuse by the police:
“In few minutes, I fell to the ground. I was beaten on my back, and on my behind…I was only thinking about my camera, my memory card, and the shots that I took. I do not know how much time it took…Finally, I could hear my camera being smashed on the sidewalk…A representative of the Democratic Modernist Pole intervened and screamed that I was a journalist. I repeated the same thing, but nothing. I was beaten again on my head.”
The SNJT decided to stop its coverage of all the activities of the Interior Ministry and those of Ennhdha (the ruling party) which the syndicate accuses of “sending its militias” to assault journalists. Zied el-Hani, a journalist, and an executive member of the SNJT told private radio station Mosaique FM that he was verbally abused by “militias belonging to Ennahdha”.
Prominent blogger Fatma Riahi (who uses the alias Fatma Arabicca) was beaten by a police officer in plain clothes, and she was immediately transferred to a hospital.
“We took to the streets to demand our right to free expression, but the police of Larayedh (Minister of Interior) — no longer the police of Ben Ali — the police of Ennhdha oppressed us, because we do not hold the same opinion”, she said.
The French language web magazine, Kapitalis also reported that its editor-in-chief Zohra Abid was beaten by a police officer.
Almost 15 months after the fall of the autocratic rule of Ben Ali, journalists are still being assaulted for doing their job. The battle for freedom of speech and a free press seems to be far from over in the birth place of the so-called Arab Spring.
