Kurdish Press Freedoms Curtailed
The parliament of the Kurdistan Regional Authority, a part of Iraq, has just passed a very dangerous press law, which has drawn vigorous protests from Iraqi Kurdish journalists. AP reports that:
' Under the measure, journalists can be prosecuted in counterterrorism courts, which could bring the death penalty, and newspapers can be shut down for up to six months and face fines up to $8,200. '
Sawt al-Iraq reports in Arabic that the head of the Kurdish journalists' guild, Farhad `Awni, and 20 editors of major newspapers and magazines, along with professors of Communication at Sulaymaniya University, launched an appeal to Kurdistan Regional Authority leader Massoud Barzani to veto the bill.
Kurdish journalists smell a rat, and suspect that Kurdish politicians will use the law to close down newspapers that criticize them and put journalists in jail whom they do not like.
Their suspicions are not without some foundation. Even under current laws, journalists have been jailed for "libelling" high Kurdish politicians, though Qadir was ultimately released.
Editors of major newspapers protested the law. The USG Open Source Center said, "Twice weekly Hawlati declares that it will close down the paper if the Media law which was endorsed yesterday by the Kurdistan parliament is not amended."
I don't believe that basic civil freedoms will last long in Kurdistan, which is the only part of Iraq where they are even relevant to most people's lives (civil freedoms are hard to maintain with a lot of bombs going off). The horrible thing is how many US and other lives have been lost so that the Kurds could have the freedoms their parliament is now abolishing.
Labels: Iraq
posted by Juan Cole @ 12/15/2007 06:25:00 AM
7 Comments:
The Kurdish press freedom has been just a theory. The ruling warlords own the media. Occasionaly, an editor would publish something a little naughty, only to get the dawn's knock on the door.
The security apparatus is split into two sections, one for each warlord. The amazing thing is that the Kurdish Parliament has passed these ties into laws, which must be only one in the whole world that lets political parties bypass the state institutions and own the security forces.
The tightening is in response to stronger challenges from some of the KDP and PUK leaders who have split, and are about to establish independent media outlets with proper funding and powerful backing from prominent Kurds fed up with the gangsters ruling them.
And the USG and its MSM echo chamber accuse Hugo Chavez of censorship and restricting the press, all of which are false; so, lets see what isn't said about this by the WaPost and other usual suspects.
Professor Cole,
Slightly - but only slightly - off topic. I had a chat yesterday with a pal who has good ITN connections. ITN is Independent Television News - the "commercial" arm of British television (as opposed to the BBC). He said they're extremely worried about their "viewership" figures. Down to a million. That's for their "flagship" evening news programme. I asked what they were getting in their heyday. He said 16 million. That's out of a then population of 56-58 million. Factor out the under-11s that surely means one in three Brits was watching that programme. Now it's one in 60.
All of this had very wide ranging "implications".
But what would be very interesting to know is: what's the "readership" - or "viewership" if you prefer - of Informed Comment?
Would you mind "disclosing" that? I seem to remember you saying a couple of years back that it was in the neighbourhood of 400,000.
Thanks
In such a world of sorrows, at least we can relax about the American lives lost to give press freedoms to the Kurds. No such lives have been lost.
The only lives lost have been in the service of imperial domination, and of using endless war to destroy domestic liberty. Dictatorship in Kurdistan is not especially relevant to these American objectives.
This article is so "American journalistic." It talks about a new law. It gives peoples' opinions about the new law. It gives suspicions about the new law. Nowhere does it state what the new law says. I'm here because I'm so tired of this kind of journalism. Where else can I go for total news?
I suspect that this new law will not be implemented and will probably die a deserved death, just as the attempt to jail that journalist last year failed after a public outcry - both internationally and within Kurdistan. Hawlayati is very influential and very independent. If the editor objects as strongly as he does to this law, it is doubtful that it will stick. There are independent-minded members of the PUK (Muhammad Tawfiq, Omar Fattah, Nechirvan Mustafa, Barham Salih) who favor reasonably open society, as well as on the KDP side (Nechirvan Barzani, Hoshyar Zebari).
The KDP comes up with boneheaded ideas like this from time to time, partially because Masoud Barzani is an unsophisticated and ignorant man who is acutely sensitive to criticism of corruption. He behaves in an authoritarian fashion and then usually backs down. Assuring press freedom in Iraqi Kurdistan will be an ongoing battle, but the public is with the reformers and newspapers like Hawlayati have very wide readership.
While I don't take this issue lightly, I also think that the public in Kurdistan has changed a lot over the years and that wiser politicians will prevail. Ultimately, there will be red lines, just as there are in Jordan, about what can and cannot be printed. But the public has grown to expect some level of press freedom, an expectation that cannot easily be reversed.
Ivorybill. Always interested in you comments on Kurdistan. I'm doing some research on the place and wondered if you could contact me through Juan.
Many thanks
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