The director of the Arabic-language Al-Jazeera network which gave a good coverage to the events in Iraq has been threatened by the Untied States of being prosecuted for provoking the Iraqis against the American forces.
“The roots of the US attacks against Al-Jazeera must be traced somewhere else. It seems that the American officals have been entangled in Iraqi marshland and hence they try to externalize the problem of the daily casualties in that country be accusing others of provocation,” he said.
The Western media did not expect strong regional media to compete with them, he added.
A Japanese reporter who was beaten up while photographing the bodies of Iraqi civilians smashed in car in Iraq said: “The US military officers do not want the world to come to know about the killing of the Iraqi civilians. This was the reason for the arrests of the reporters in Iraq.”
“Violence against the reporters is tantamount to suppression of freedom of expression and creation of hurdle in the way of free flow of information,” he added.
Recently a reporter of mass circulation Turkish newspaper, Hurriyet, was arrested in Iraq for photographing the tanks of the occupying forces. Reacting to the arrest of the reporter, deputy prime minister of Turkey said that the arrest was in contravention with freedom of speech and international law.
For the past one month two Iranian documentary filmmakers have been detained by the US forces in Iraq without any contact with their family of their country.
Commenting on the arrests, an expert of international relations, Dr. Sadatian, told the Mehr News Agency: “We talk of the rights of reporters on the basis of international conventions and collective security law, while the Americans interpret international law on the basis of the unipolar world order.
Although given the military power of |Russia, economic power of Japan and political power of European Union, we cannot say for sure that the world is entirely under the control of the United States, some of the US moves indicate that the international mechanisms have become irrelevant.
Although it is logical to talk about the rights of the reporters within the framework of international conventions, it is not effective, he said.
The US is not accountable and only under the pretext of maintaining the security stops the reporters’ activities.
SM/SM
END
MNA
Your Comment