A photographer for a Baghdad newspaper says Iraqi police beat and detained him for snapping pictures of long lines at gas stations. A reporter for another local paper received an invitation from Iraqi police to cover their graduation ceremony and ended up receiving death threats from the recruits. A local TV reporter says she's lost count of how many times Iraqi authorities have confiscated her cameras and smashed her tapes.it's worth remembering that if our reasons for invading iraq in 2003 are now to spread freedom in the middle-east, we gotta, you know, spread some freedom there. and not just make it another failed state.
All these cases are under investigation by the Iraqi Association to Defend Journalists, a union that formed amid a chilling new trend of alleged arrests, beatings and intimidation of Iraqi reporters at the hands of Iraqi security forces. Reporters Without Borders, an international watchdog group for press freedom, tracked the arrests of five Iraqi journalists within a two-week period and issued a statement on April 26 asking authorities "to be more discerning and restrained and not carry out hasty and arbitrary arrests."
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The fall of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship resulted in unprecedented freedom for Iraqi journalists, who'd suffered torture and prison terms for criticizing the former regime. More than 150 new newspapers and several local TV and radio stations sprang up immediately after the war began - one of the biggest success stories of the U.S.-led invasion. In recent months, however, Iraqi police have begun cracking down on local journalists, creating a wave of fear reminiscent of Saddam's era.
(via juan)
