Al-Jazeera TV Special Report: Sunday, 7 March 2004. US Occupation
Imposes New Limits on Journalists in
Iraq By Muhammad 'Abd
al-'Ati. THERE'S nothing strange about all the talk about
how dangerous it is to work in Iraq. The whole
country is in a state of lawlessness, with no legal
government, and human life is at risk at every
moment. All it takes to bring a life to an end is
one bullet and then the incident will be traced to
an "unknown person" and dropped. But what is
strange is that the source of this danger lies with
the American occupation itself, which claims to
have come to spread democracy in Iraq. American
work permits  Eric
Mueller comments: THERE'S not a lot of "secret" news
coming out of Iraq these days, mostly just
the daily grind of bombings and so forth
that are soft-pedaled in the western
media. The Iraqis have been immensely
successful in not allowing either the
occupation or the new regime to get
settled in, and that's what guerrilla
warfare is all about; but it doesn't make
for great scoops.  Arabist Eric Mueller
is this website's expert on Middle Eastern
affairs. He is a featured speaker at our
Real
History weekend at Cincinnati each Labor
Day |
Until just last week it was the right of every
journalist to enter Iraq and to take up his work
without getting a permit or license and without
registering with the American authorities. But now
all that has changed. The US forces now require
each and every journalist, whether already in the
country or a new arrival, to register his or her
reports with them, and, after that, to obtain a
journalistic work permit card from them.Foreign reporters in Baghdad say that this
demand is aimed at imposing limits on the
information media in the near future. These
journalists say that the day may come when the
American occupation authorities will refuse to
grant a work permit to this or that news agency
based on how pleased or displeased they are over
their coverage of events in Iraq. In addition, this measure serves to impose a
kind of self-censorship on the journalist as he
works in the field subject to the fear that he will
later be interrogated by the Americans about what
he has reported. This is particularly true inasmuch
as he is totally in the grasp of US security forces
anywhere he goes in Iraq. Some of the news media operating in Iraq have
complained about the way they are treated by the US
forces when they are displeased with their reports
-- a fact that only serves to increase the fears of
the working journalist in the country. The punitive
treatment meted out by US forces can range from
denying certain agencies preferential news coverage
opportunities, to detention of the reporters,
searches, restrictions, arrests in some cases and
imprisonment in solitary cells. And it can go all
the way up to subjecting them to various types of
violence that can at times be deadly. Denying
opportunitiesIt has been noted that when the US occupation
troops go out to raid houses of people suspected of
having ties to the Resistance, they bring along
with them certain specific news companies, such as
Fox News or CNN, and sometimes Reuters or the BBC,
but never other news agencies -- like al-Jazeera
and Abu Dhabi TV. We brought that up with the American Lieutenant
General in charge of coordination with the news
media in Iraq and he said, "That's right. But the
reason for it is that the first media you mentioned
will cover the event and write that these raids are
being carried out to crack down on "terrorists" who
constitute a threat to the security of the
"Coalition" forces. But those other agencies you
mentioned will write that these raids are aimed at
the Iraqi "Resistance" to the "occupation" forces.
Your coverage will not be even-handed as far as the
American side is concerned." Detention
and searchesSearches, sometimes accompanied by verbal abuse,
are the subject of a complaint made by two
journalists working for a well-known satellite TV
company. They requested that their names not be
published, lest they face even more problems. They
reported that they have frequently been subjected
to such treatment, the most recent time being last
week in Samarra'. There occupation forces detained
them. After they were searched, they were told,
"you tell your viewers that the Americans are going
to stay here and that they came first to control
Iraq's oil, and then Saudi Arabia's oil, then
Iran's oil, and then to attack Syria after
that." When they protested that that was not true, the
officer in charge of the American patrol laughed at
them and said, "Anyhow, we aren't going to leave
here until this hair turns gray" pointing to the
black hair under the helmet he was wearing." Arrest
without causeThen there are the instances of groundless
arrest that constitute another source of
apprehension and further impede journalists' work
in Iraq. They have been thrown in solitary prison
cells, where they suffer psychological and physical
torment, according to one journalist who has
received this treatment. MurderThe instances where journalists have been killed
represent the greatest danger that faces
correspondents working in Iraq. One year ago, as
the organization Journalists without Borders
testifies, ten journalists were killed in Iraq,
only one of whom was a Iraqi. Some of them were
killed by accident in the course of battles and
some others were killed in the intentional shelling
of their bureaus. This was what happened to the Abu
Dhabi and al-Jazeera TV bureaus. In the last case,
al-Jazeera correspondent Tariq Ayyub was killed in
what constituted a message sent by the Americans --
a message whose implications are still being read
by journalists at work or heading to assignments in
Iraq today. | ![[]](../../std/dings/list.gif){kind=small}
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