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Iraq parliament bars media as tension
mounts
27.11.2006
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BAGHDAD, November
27, -- Iraq's parliament will bar the media from
future sessions and began on Monday by refusing
access to reporters and then cutting off television
coverage as a debate on mounting sectarian violence
became heated.
Spokesmen for the government and parliament said it
was part of efforts, newly agreed by Iraq's National
Security Council, to stop political leaders
contradicting each other in public and prevent media
coverage that was deemed to inflame conflicts.
"If there is any tension in the state, then the
media should be kept out because it may increase
tension," speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani told
lawmakers in a televised session after dozens of
journalists were barred from the building by
security guards.
When one lawmaker rose to object, Mashhadani, from
the Sunni minority, ordered the cameras turned off,
effectively shutting off public access to a
legislature whose election was held up by the United
States as a beacon for democracy in the Middle East. |
Iraq's parliament |
No transcript is published and journalists and
members of the public have always been barred from
the chamber itself.
After reporters were left standing outside the
Saddam Hussein-era convention centre in Baghdad's
Green Zone which houses parliament, Mohammed Abu
Bakr, a parliament spokesman, told Reuters that he
could not say when they could return.
An official in Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's media
office said: "This is one of the decisions of the
National Security Council to make sure people speak
with one voice to the media."
He declined to say whether further measures were
planned to prevent the media reporting on political
disagreements.
Security Council meetings in recent days have
focused on how to stop Thursday's killing of over
200 people in the Baghdad Shi'ite stronghold of Sadr
City triggering all-out civil war.
President Jalal Talabani, an ethnic Kurd, blamed the
media on Friday for inciting violence -- apparently
referring to conflicting accounts from Iraqi
officials of apparent reprisal attacks by gunmen on
a Sunni neighbourhood in Baghdad that day.
CONTRADICTORY ACCOUNTS
It was not the first time this month that officials
flatly contradicted each other -- often, though not
exclusively, along sectarian lines -- and have then
accused the media of distorting accounts of kidnaps
and killings when quoting official sources.
The Iraqi Journalists Union declined comment on the
issue -- a senior union official indicated he was
afraid to speak out. Dozens of journalists have been
killed since the U.S. liberation of 2003, with the
number of killings rising sharply of late.
The government has also not hesitated to censure
media organisations. It ordered two Sunni-run
television channels off the air for several days
this month, apparently over their coverage of the
death sentence passed on Saddam.
Al Jazeera has been banned from Iraq for the past
two years. The Baghdad bureau of its rival pan-Arab
channel Al Arabiya was shut down for a month in
September because of its coverage.
Politicians from the Shi'ite majority have accused
channels run from Sunni-ruled Arab states of being
biased against them.
In a "four-point plan" produced by Prime Minister
Nuri al-Maliki last month to improve security in
Baghdad, point No. 3 was to increase "supervision"
of the media. Little evidence of the implementation
of the plan has yet been seen.
Reuters
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