Gorilla’s Guides

Today the Iraki Journalists Union held a ceremony to commemorate the founding of the Iraki Press.

It wasn’t a cheerful occasion. Normally held on June 15th it had had to be canceled in the light of the violence following the second bombing of the Golden Shrine in Samarra.

During the ceremonies the families of the Iraki journalists and media workers slaughtered in Irak since the American led war against Irak started in March 2003 were honoured.

Aswat Al Iraq who have seen three of their journalists murdered in the last few weeks have published a feature which highlights the suffering of journalists’ families.

Many journalists in Iraq hide what they do for a living in an attempt to avoid being targeted by militias and death squads, some even try to hide what they do for a living from their own families in case a slip of the tongue brings them to the attention of a death squad.

For the families the situation is so bad that they would rather their loved ones leave the country and not come back than see them killed.

Meanwhile the embedded western journalists continue to whore out the American lies about what the Americans have done and continue to do to Irak, her people, Irak’s children, and Irak’s children’s future. They are not fit to lick the soles of that child’s shoes. For them I hope that some day they suffer some of that child’s pain. They are as just as guilty as the corrupt evil and cynical American politicians who have brought this hell to us and so are their readers who mindlessly swallow their stupid and racist propaganda. Irak is for the Irakis take your war criminals in uniform and whore journalists and go.

Nur.

Wife of immigrant Iraqi journalist laments separation, rejects his return home

Baghdad - Voices of Iraq

Sunday , 24 /06 /2007 Time 6:05:26

Baghdad, Jun 24, (VOI) – Despite the anguish of separation and the absence of her husband and breadwinner, Umm Samir, a mother of two, says that she prefers distance to not seeing her husband again.

The woman, a wife of an Iraqi journalist who worked for a foreign news agency, said that her husband left Iraq one year ago after receiving death threats. “I felt great pain when he left the country and I faced many problems in surviving without him, especially since he was our breadwinner. Now I do not want him to come back because he may be killed or, at the very least, kidnapped,” Umm Samir said.

After her husband’s departure and being unable to afford the rent for her house, Umm Samir moved to live with her parents. “My parents and my husband’s family are providing for us,” she indicated.

Displacement is an example of the misery suffered by Iraqi journalists, who have been intimidated by death threats since the collapse of the former Iraqi regime in 2003.
Salma, a journalist working for a Baghdad-based Kurdish news agency, said that she received death threats via email two weeks ago, forcing her to seek asylum in another country.

Much to the surprise of many, despite the availability of accurate figures on the number of murdered Iraqi journalists, no statistics are collected on how many journalists have left Iraq after receiving death threats.

Many journalists in Iraq hide the nature of their job from their next of kin in an attempt to stay away from the eyes of militia and armed groups, which may target them as a result of their work.

An Iraqi journalist told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI) that she has been lying about the nature of her job to her closet friends and neighbors for two years. “I am not afraid of them. I am just afraid that the information may be disclosed to a murderer in one way or another and misfortune happen to me or my family,” she explained.

According to reports released by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), 85% of the journalists who have been killed in Iraq since 2003 were Iraqis. “Half of the dead worked for foreign news agencies,” the reports revealed.

Commenting on the tragedy of Iraqi journalists, an editorial board member from an Iraq-based newspaper said that Iraqi journalists are a casualty of the deteriorating security situation. According to him, journalists are more likely to be targeted by armed groups because of their awareness of the controversy that surrounds the killing of journalists. “Their primary aim is to cause uproar over their operations,” he added.
The Journalistic Freedoms Observatory (JFO), a non-governmental Iraqi organization that monitors violations and aggression against media staff in Iraq, revealed that 197 media workers, including 107 journalists, have been killed in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003

Source: Aswat Aliraq