(HRinfo/IFEX) – The following is a joint statement issued by HRinfo and 10 other signatory organizations: Egypt: Journalists & Reporters Assaulted and Cameras Seized Cairo, 11 May 2006 – Today downtown Cairo witnessed a new crime in the series of crimes being committed by Egypt’s security bodies. State Security forces arrested more than 6 journalists […]
(HRinfo/IFEX) – The following is a joint statement issued by HRinfo and 10 other signatory organizations:
Egypt: Journalists & Reporters Assaulted and Cameras Seized
Cairo, 11 May 2006 – Today downtown Cairo witnessed a new crime in the series of crimes being committed by Egypt’s security bodies. State Security forces arrested more than 6 journalists and reporters while they were covering the protests organized in solidarity with the Egyptian judges. The Judges themselves and their colleagues were denied entrance to the High Court Building (Dar al-Qada’a al-Aly) where they sought to attend the “Qualification Session” that was scheduled for 9:00 a.m. today.
After more than an hour of standing in a blockade on the stairs of the Cassation Court, the judges went back to the Judges’ Club along with their defense council, while the session started in their absence at about 11:00 p.m.
Plains-clothed police officers assaulted the reporters and cameramen of Reuters and al-Jazeera news agencies, seizing their cameras; al-Jazeera’s cameraman was also brutally assaulted.
Massive numbers of Security forces, along with special anti-demonstration state “karate units”, overtook the town center, assaulting, beating and kidnapping dozens of demonstrators participating in the three main demonstrations in Talaat Harb Square, near Ramsis Square and on 26 July Street.
The undersigned organizations believe that:
This manner of dealing with journalists and reporters doing their jobs is a gross violation to freedom of expression and the right to information which the government is always touting; it also reveals the extreme the police and the Interior Ministry have reached in their brutality.
These event require serious and urgent actions, including not only the release of those kidnapped, but the holding accountable of all parties responsible for these inhumane practices.
The signatories:
The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information
Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies
Civil Observatory for Human Rights
Egyptian Center for Housing Rights
Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights
Habi Center for Environmental Rights
Hisham Mubarak Law Center
Labor and Syndicates Service Center
South Center for Human Rights
The Association for Human Rights Legal Aid
Andalus Institute for Tolerance and Anti Violence Studies
