Several of our members have been at the forefront of reporting in Egypt and other parts of the Middle East and North Africa over the past year. As we are reminded on a regular basis, reporting during times of tumult is dangerous, and on several occasions, journalists, including AMEJA members, have been harassed, assaulted, injured, detained, or even worse.
AMEJA is particularly disturbed by what appears to be the deliberate, harassment of journalists in Egypt last month. Two of our members, Mona El-Tahawy, was sexually assaulted and beaten by Egyptian government agents and Jehane Noujaim, was detained.
Of course, the violence against journalists isn’t limited to Egypt. Earlier this year, one of our honorary board members, Anthony Shadid, along with his colleagues were arrested and beaten by Qaddhafi government forces while reporting on the Libyan uprising. Karim Fakhrawi, the co-founder of al-Wasat newspaper in Bahrain, died in police custody in April. Jordanian riot police beat local and foreign reporters – including AMEJA board member Kareem Fahim – at a demonstration in July. Hassan al-Wadhaf, a Yemeni cameraman, was fatally shot by a government sniper in Sana’a in September.
In November, Ferzat Jarban, a Syrian cameraman, was found dead with his eyes gouged out a day after he was arrested while filming anti-government demonstrations in Homs.
Sadly, there are dozens of other journalists working for local news organizations that have been tortured and imprisoned by Middle Eastern governments. Among them have been journalists held by US authorities at various prisons including Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and Bagram, Afghanistan.
AMEJA stands with journalists everywhere who are being targeted simply for fulfilling their mission of enlightening the world about the events that ultimately affect us all. We would hope that members inform us in a timely manner of friends and colleagues who go missing or who are injured.
