(RSF/IFEX) – RSF wrote to State Prosecutor Adnan Addoum on 14 March 2003, urging him to drop the judicial investigation launched on 13 March against the liberal daily “An-Nahar”, one of Lebanon’s leading newspapers, because of an 11 March column, entitled “Letter to God”, that angered certain Muslim leaders in the country. In the contentious […]
(RSF/IFEX) – RSF wrote to State Prosecutor Adnan Addoum on 14 March 2003, urging him to drop the judicial investigation launched on 13 March against the liberal daily “An-Nahar”, one of Lebanon’s leading newspapers, because of an 11 March column, entitled “Letter to God”, that angered certain Muslim leaders in the country.
In the contentious article, Akl Awit, a Christian journalist who is also known to be a deeply religious poet, called on God “to no longer remain with his arms crossed and to rein in the United States,” in order to prevent an attack on Iraq.
“Press freedom is apparently no longer accepted in Lebanon, a country which was once a model in the Arab world,” RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard said in a letter to the state prosecutor. “Lebanon’s judicial system should guarantee freedom of thought and harmony between religions, but instead its inquisitional attitude will just aggravate religious tension.”
“A newspaper is the victim of violent threats, people call for it to be banned from distribution and burned, and who does the prosecutor decide to prosecute? The newspaper itself! A column is by definition the expression of an opinion and, in our view, it contained nothing that could be considered defamatory of any religious belief. There is no justification for this judicial investigation,” Ménard added.
Awit’s column angered Sheikh Taha Saboungi, a mufti in Tripoli, northern Lebanon’s leading city, which has a Sunni majority. Describing the column as “blasphemous” and “more harmful than Satanism,” the religious leader publicly urged the Prosecutor’s Office and the Information and Interior Ministries to intervene. On 11 March, Muslim religious leaders met in Dar El-Fatwa with “youth” representatives from Tripoli and issued a statement calling for distribution of the newspaper in Tripoli to be banned and for all copies to be burned.
“An-Nahar” owner and managing editor Gibran Toueni, press organisations and journalists’ associations reacted on 11 March by condemning the “threats and calls for dissension and disorder” and accused the Muslim leaders of making statements that were “hostile to press freedom.” The newspaper also protested the threats in a 12 March letter to the state prosecutor.
