5 Nov 2009 | Uncategorized
New York based Committee to Protect Journalists has written to Prime Minister Gordon Brown, requesting an inquiry into the death of Afghan journalist Sultan Munadi during a rescue operation carried out by British forces in which New York Times journalist Stephen Farrell was freed from Taliban captors:
As an organization of journalists dedicated to the defense of press freedom around the world, we are writing today to request that you authorize a comprehensive investigation into the rescue operation on September 9. Many questions remain, among them whether Munadi’s rescue was a central objective, what circumstances existed when he was killed, and why his remains were left behind after British forces withdrew. We urge you to authorize the Ministry of Defence to carry out an internal inquiry and to make its findings public. We believe that such an inquiry can be carried out without compromising the operational security of British and NATO forces operating in Afghanistan.
…
CPJ’s two-month-long effort to document the events that led to the rescue and Munadi’s death, however, has revealed many unanswered questions. We feel compelled to note that British authorities have declined our requests for information. The unanswered questions include:
* Was the recovery of both Farrell and Munadi an explicit objective of the military operation?
* What were the circumstances of Munadi’s death? Is there any evidence Munadi was shot accidentally by British forces who did not recognize him as a hostage?
* After Farrell pointed out Munadi to British forces, did anyone check for vital signs?
* Why were Munadi’s remains left at the scene of the firefight?
Read the rest here
5 Nov 2009 | Comment, News and features, United Kingdom
A new report by English PEN Index on Censorship argues that fear of libel action means that freedom of expression is under threat as never before, John Kampfner tells the Independent’s Ian Burrell
(more…)
4 Nov 2009 | Index Index, minipost, News and features
A journalist was kidnapped and killed in Durango state in northern Mexico on 2 November.
Bladimir Antuna García, a reporter for the police section of El Tiempo de Durango newspaper, was found dead on Monday according to the Durango attorney general’s office. Antuna García had been kidnapped by an armed group early Monday on his way to work in Durango city, the state capital.
On 26 May, following the murder of reporter Eliseo Barrón Hernández, someone called him and threatened that Antuna García would be next. Antuna García, whose work often focused on police matters, also told to the Center for Journalism and Public Ethics (CEPET) that he survived an assassination attempt on 26 April, when a gunman fired shots at him in front of his home.
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4 Nov 2009 | Uncategorized
As a hardened secularist (indeed, an erstwhile professional atheist at New Humanist magazine), I have to admit I’m not sure how to react to yesterday’s ruling in favour of “green martyr” Tim Nicholson, placing his environmentalist beliefs on a legal par with religious beliefs.
At first glimpse, it’s a victory for Nicholson’s freedom of conscience; Nicholson is pretty much the UK environmentalist movement’s first legally recognised conshie.
And yet…and yet. This ruling does some weird things. It a) upholds the privilege that religious belief holds under law, and b) potentially reduces what should be a scientific and political standpoint (i.e., a belief in the evidence for man-made climate change and the need to limit/reverse it through practical means) to a supernatural belief: for every climate-change sceptic, here, finally, is legal proof of what they’ve said all along: climate change is an article of orthodoxy and faith rather than science.
But then, should we be glad that other “deeply held” viewpoints are now given the same status as belief in the supernatural?
Baffling.
