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Journalists Covering the Elections in Baghdad, Basra, Falluja, and Hilla Harrased

Security and military forces abused some 64 journalists and destroyed their tools while covering the elections of the interior and defense ministries personnel, sick people in the hospitals, and prisoners of less than 5 years imprisonment.

15 journalists and cameramen were abused in Basra jail while trying to cover the election there.

Member of the journalistic freedoms observatory (JFO) in Basra said that the guards of the prison attached to the justice ministry assaulted the journalists and broke their tools.

The abused journalists work for associated press, Francs press, Reuters, News matique, Merbad and Sumer radio stations, Sharqia, Arabia, and Iraqia satellite channels.

Despite the suppression practiced against the journalist, they succeeded in documenting those violations they faced.

The high independent electoral commission in Baghdad banned 20 journalists accompanying the media office of the interior ministry to get closer to the polling station near the interior ministry where the army threatened to use weapons against them; they gathered them in a circle of 50 diameters space. The interior ministry criticized the high independent electoral for banning the journalists entering or getting closer to the polling stations.

In Falluja-west of Baghdad- the Iraqi army barred 15 journalists and media men to reach the voting center.

Member of the JFO in Falluja told that Iraqi army forced the journalists to stay 100m a way from the al-Jumhoriya school polling station which caused the local police to intervene to protect them against any possible aggression the army might conduct.

One officer told the journalists that there was nothing to film or to write about, he ordered the army voters not to talk to the journalists; this urged the journalists to contact the head of the Anbar commission Khalid Rajab to register their complain against the officer's behavior.
In Hilla, center of Babylon province 12 journalists were banned to enter the polling station due to not having the accrediations issued by the electoral commission which the journalists have no idea about.

Security forces of the province barred the journalists to freely roaming inside the province despite their getting permission from the police headquarters to facilitate their movement during the time of elections.

 

 

 

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