US moves to close down Al-Jazeera TV

Only a day after US Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz claimed that the Arabic Al-Jazeera television channel was “inciting violence” and “endangering the lives of American troops” in Iraq, the station’s Baghdad bureau chief has written a scathing reply to the American administration, complaining that in the past month the station’s offices and staff in Iraq “have been subject to strafing by gunfire, death threats, confiscation of news material, and multiple detentions and arrests, all carried out by US soldiers...”

The unprecedented dispute between an Anglo-American occupation authority, supposedly dedicated to “democracy” in Iraq, and an Arab station once praised by Washington for its services to free speech in the Arab world comes at a time when the US administration appears to be laying the groundwork to close down Al-Jazeera’s operations in Iraq for alleged “incitement to violence.”

America’s senior occupation proconsul in Iraq, Paul Bremer, has officially stated that he would close down newspapers or television stations guilty of “incitement to violence” —without, of course, explaining exactly what this phrase means.

Already, however, the dispute between Al-Jazeera and the US authorities has gone beyond mere words. American troops have raided the bureau’s offices in the city of Ramadi and arrested reporters, harassment that has been accompanied by claims from US officers that Al-Jazeera has advance notice of attacks against American troops.

The Al-Jazeera bureau chief suspects that poor translation of its dispatches mean that “half-truths and total falsehoods about our reporting...make the rounds in Washington, Baghdad and elsewhere.” No doubt remembering the American missile strikes against Al-Jazeera’s offices, he also states in his letter to Bremer that “the mischaracterizations of our reporting made by Wolfowitz and others are a form of incitement to violence against Al-Jazeera, the first Arab television channel to practice professional Western-style journalism free of the notorious censorship so prominent in the rest of the Middle East.” (Counterpunch)

Intl. journalists’ body urges reopening
of radio station

An international organization of journalists has called on the government to reopen a closed radio station in Tacloban City in Leyte and recognize its employees’ union.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) asked the Philippine government and the National Labor Relations Commission (NLRC) to reopen immediately the Bombo Radyo-Tacloban and to order the recognition of the radio’s trade union by its management.

On Mar. 11, the management was informed about the union’s existence and that the following day, it gave the union three options: that it withdraw its registration; that the union’s president and executive board members resign; and the closure of the station.

IFJ further said that the 28 members of the union refused all the three options, as a consequence of which, the station owner shut down the station on Mar. 12.

Bombo Radyo had been in existence for 11 years until its closure which, according to the management, was due to losses. But Allan Amistoso, president of the Bombo Radyo-Tacloban Emloyees’ Union, told the IFJ-sponsored Forum on Press Freedom last month that the closure of the radio station was “a clear case of union busting.”

The IFJ called on its member union in the Philippines, the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines, “to support these journalists.” It pointed out that in accordance with the fundamentals of journalistic labor rights and press freedom, all charges against the Bombo Radyo-Tacloban employees must be dropped. (ABS-CBN News.com)