Iraq

Media technician Ali Ghani was killed in an attack by mortar fire while reporting in Jaziret al-Khalideya, in Iraq’s Anbar province on Saturday, August 20. Correspondent Hussein al-Fares was wounded in the same attack, according to Al-Ahad TV, which employed both men.

One day after the brutal murder of a Kurdish report in Dahuk, a TV cameraman died while covering fighting between Kurdish forces and ISIS near Mosul.

An Iraqi cameraman was killed on 13 July in the south of Mosul, Iraq. He is the 4th media worker to be killed in Iraq since the beginning of the year.

In a statement from the Rudaw Media Network, following the attack, the network made it very clear that this would not hinder them from delivering the news, declaring that ‘Rudaw was not afraid of any threats in the past and we will not be afraid now or in the future’.

Photographer Fadil al-Garaawi, 45, was employed by Iraq’s elite Interior Ministry forces and also contributed to Iraqi news outlets. He was killed when a mortar round struck near a group of journalists and members of the security forces in Fallujah, according to media reports. Three members of the security forces were also killed.

A leaked email that originated from an Iraqi Internet service provider (ISP) and was shared with SMEX confirms that on May 16, 2016, the Internet will be shutdown for three hours, from 5 a.m. to 8 a.m., “in all regions of Iraq.”

“Using the Iraqi “war on terror” media guidelines to shut down Al Jazeera is a blatant attempt to put pressure on the network to report only one side of a story in a country that struggles to provide any protection to journalists on the ground.”

Journalist Saif Tallal and cameraman Hassan al-Anbaki working for Sharqiya TV channel were shot dead on 12 January by some masked militiamen near Baquba, the capital of Diyala province in Iraq, on their way back from a professional mission covering violence in the Muqdadiyah area.

Iraq’s second largest city, Mosul fell to IS on 10 June 2014. Since then, independent media activity has been non-existent. All media outlets have been taken over and are now used to put out the jihadi group’s message. All journalists still in the city have had to stop working to avoid being the target of reprisals.

Iraqi security forces have repeatedly beaten and violently dispersed protesters during anti-corruption demonstrations since August 2015 without any apparent justification.

Thousands of protesters had gathered in several towns and cities across Sulaimaniya governorate to demand jobs, payment of back wages, and the resignation of Masoud Barzani, president of the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) and head of the KDP. Two protesters and a third man died in the town of Fort Diza on October 9, and two others, both reported to have been unarmed, died in the town of Kalar on October 10.

In the autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan in recent days, many Kurdish media have been attacked in connection with a political crisis, where security forces have closed media outlets in an attempt to suppress criticism of the government.

Several Iraqi provinces have witnessed the violent deaths of political activists and tribal leaders supportive of Iraq’s nation-wide anti-corruption protests. Undaunted by the killings and the government’s apparent inability or unwillingness to respond to them, protesters have vowed to keep demonstrating until their demands are met.

Photojournalist Jala al-Abadi, father of two, is the third journalist to be killed in Iraq this year following the deaths of Iraqi photographer Adnan Abdul Razzaq and reporter Ali Ansari.

Journalist Raed Al-Joubouri’s murder at his Baghdad home last week comes just days after another journalist, Thaer Alali, was publicly killed by ISIS.

RSF made this request in a letter on 16 April to the office of Lithuania’s permanent representative to the United Nations in New York, who will assume the Security Council’s Presidency in May, and in a letter to the UN secretary-general.