Iraqi Journalist: "There is no progress. We are going backwards," [View All]

[leftchick]

This is so very tragic......

http://abcnews.go.com/International/CSM/story?id=2648075

<snip>

A growing number of incidents in recent months have demonstrated the insurgency and militia's power to target and intimidate. There have been a string of media murders against print, radio, and TV journalists. When Al Shabiya TV was hit, it was the second such attack in a fortnight.

"There is no progress. We are going backwards," says Ziad al-Ajili, head of the Iraqi Journalistic Freedoms Observatory, an Iraqi free speech watchdog group that tabulates attacks against Iraqi journalists.

"The level of freedom has dropped to a very low level, because the insurgents and militias have relations with the government," says Mr. Ajili.

"When they see the government close Al Sharqiya TV, Al Arabiya and Al Jazeera, think they have a right to kill journalists."

<snip>

"Until now, there is a dictatorship in the Iraqi mind," says Ajili. "They are targeting independent journalists all the time." He points to the case of Sunni journalist Ahmad al-Rashid of Al Sharqiya TV. He was driving through a Sunni area, when a three-man hit squad in another car, almost certainly Sunnis, shot him dead.