Muntadar al-Zeidi, the correspondent for Iraqi-owned Al-Baghdadiya television based who threw shoes at Bush in Baghdad yesterday, shouted “Killer of Iraqis, killer of children” as he threw his shoes at the US president – showing the soles of your shoes is regarded as an extreme form of disrespect in Iraq.
Middle East expert Juan Cole reports the background to al-Zeidi’s protest here. Millions of people around the world will feel nothing but sympathy for his actions.
But there is no doubt that the journalist’s life is in extreme danger from the Iraqi government and US forces, who have an appalling record of detaining, abusing, torturing and killing journalists.
The respected Committee to Protect Journalists describes the situation for Iraqi journalists in 2007 like this:
“The Iraqi government continued to commit a wide range of press freedom abuses that included censorship, arbitrary detentions, threats, physical attacks, and harassment. … Throughout the year there were numerous reports that security forces harassed journalists by physically assaulting them, seizing their footage, interrogating them, and expelling them from press conferences or from official offices…
“The vast majority of victims continued to be Iraqis, most of whom were singled out by armed groups and murdered with impunity. … Threats have forced many Iraqi journalists to live clandestinely, leave the profession altogether, or flee the country.”
In making his protest yesterday, al-Zeidi also acted as a professional. The only way for an Iraqi journalist to convey to the world the level of hostility to the Americans in Iraq is to protest in this fashion – revealing that you cannot be a journalist there without selling yourself to the government or putting your life in extreme danger.
As the Washington Post reported in October, the US government is paying private contractors in Iraq a further $300 million over the next three years to produce “news stories” and “public service advertisements” for the Iraqi media in order to expand what the US military calls “information/psychological operations” in Iraq.
This content is then broadcast by the Iraqi media without telling the audience. One contractor told the Post: “They don’t know that the originator of the content is the US government. If they did, they would never run anything.”
The US influence over Iraqi media is extensive. For example, the US pays local papers to run articles by US troops. As one Iraqi journalist told the Christian Science Monitor a year ago: “We thought the fall of [Saddam Hussein] would usher in a new era of press freedom, but now all of that has been quashed by religious institutions and the government itself. We all practice self-censorship for one reason or another.”
Al-Zeidi’s protest is no different from that of the campaigners who “pied” Phil Woolas in October after the immigration minister made racist remarks. The Iraqi government should treat al-Zeidi’s protest as such, and should release him immediately.
Please write to these organisations and ask them to raise al-Zeidi’s case as soon as possible:
International Federation of Journalists: ifj@ifj.org
(Please copy in the IFJ Middle East section: sarah.bouchetob@ifj.org and monir.zaarour@ifj.org)
National Union of Journalists: info@nuj.org.uk
Reporters Without Borders: rsf@rsf.org
Committee to Protect Journalists: info@cpj.org
