Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Journalists under threat in Egypt

After a spate of attacks and detentions, the Committee to Protect Journalists has highlighted the targeting of media staff in Egypt

The Guardian

"Press freedom groups have warned that an "unprecedented" number of journalists are being targeted by Egyptian forces during the violent crackdown on Muslim Brotherhood supporters.The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said it was "deeply disturbed" after several reporters for international media groups, including the Guardian, were assaulted or briefly detained in Cairo over the weekend.
A French television crew were held for about 10 hours on Saturday after they covered a siege by security forces on Fateh mosque, in Ramses Square, in the Egyptian capital. The Guardian's Egypt correspondent, Patrick Kingsley, was detained twice on Saturday while reporting from the square.
The incidents followed the fatal shootings of a Sky News cameraman and a reporter for a Gulf newspaper last week as part of days of widespread bloodshed across Egypt.

Sherif Mansour, the CPJ's Middle East and North Africa orogramme co-ordinator, raised the alarm about the apparent crackdown on journalists in the politically-torn country. "The unprecedented number of killings and harassment of journalists in Egypt last week are ominous signs for the Egyptian press," he said.
"A free press is fundamental to the restoration of democracy and to the inclusion of disparate voices in public discourse. Safeguarding press freedom, as promised by the Egyptian interim government, is a key step in that direction and direly needed right now."......."

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