nicky g
04-09-2003, 05:40 AM
As in Afghanistan, the offices of al-Jazeera have again been blown up following criticism of their coverage, thisis time killing one of their correspondents. I find it hard to believe this is a coincidence. Many people here loathe al-Jazeera, but never the less isn't this a clear war crime? Thefeeble excuse that Iraqi (and previously Serb) TV is part of the regime's "command-and-control" network can hardly apply to a Qatari satellite network.
http://www.indexonline.org/news/20030408_iraq.shtml
Iraq: Media under attack
US-British forces turning
journalists into targets
The cavalier attitude of the US and Britain to the media's rights in time of war, especially where the media presents a contrary view to their own, has led once again to attacks on civilians, tragic loss of life, and has dramatically increased the risk to all journalists - now and in the future.
On the night of 7-8 April the media became targets of the US-British forces in Iraq. A week after the Iraqi authorities tried to stop him from broadcasting, the US effectively shut al-Jazeera Baghdad correspondent Tariq Ayub down for good, killing him in a missile strike on the station's studio in the city.
A US military spokeswoman has denied that al-Jazeera's TV studio in Baghdad was deliberately targeted. "We did not target al-Jazeera," Major Rumi Nielson-Green told journalists in Qatar. "We only target legitimate military targets."
The station didn't believe her. "I will not be objective about this because we have been dragged into this conflict," al-Jazeera's visibly upset Baghdad correspondent Majed Abdel Hadi told viewers, as monitored by Reuters. "We were targeted because the Americans don't want the world to see the crimes they are committing against the Iraqi people."
The Pentagon has a record here. Hours before the US-backed Afghan Northern Alliance marched into Kabul on 12 November 2001, the US dropped a 500-pound bomb on al-Jazeera's studios in the city. Then as now al-Jazeera said the attack was deliberate; then as now the US denied intentionally targeting it.
Also, then as now, the US preceded its attack with criticism of its coverage. In October 2001, US Secretary of State Colin Powell asked the Emir of Qatar, who partly finances the station, to rein in the station's editorial line and cease its broadcasts of videos of Osama Bin Laden's speeches.
In March 2003, British and US officials criticised the station for broadcasting footage of captured US prisoners of war. US officials say the network is biased toward Iraq and allege that the station airs Iraqi propaganda to gain profitable exclusive footage - a charge the network denies.
In an effort to prevent US attacks al-Jazeera had provided the US forces with the coordinates of its Kabul office and did the same in Baghdad, plus the code of its signal to the satellite transponder - also without effect.
The missile shattered the building in the early hours of the morning. Abu Dhabi TV showed footage of a huge fire blazing from the Jazeera office. Jazeera correspondent Tayseer Alouni, known across the Arab world for his reports from the war in Afghanistan, was seen carrying the wounded Ayub into a car. A cameraman, Zuheir al-Iraqi, was hit in the neck by shrapnel in the blast.
The attacks on Iraqi TV the same night saw its transmitters in the Iraqi capital destroyed in an effort to further demoralise Saddam Hussein's remaining forces. Iraqi television and radio had up to that point continued to broadcast a steady stream of propaganda messages. After the attack it showed only old footage of crowds cheering Saddam and played patriotic music.
In fact it was a bad night for all the media. The Hotel Palestine, home to the international press corps, was accidentally hit by US fire. Reuter cameraman Taras Protsyuk, 35, later died of his wounds. Three other Reuter staff and a Spanish cameraman were also wounded.
The night of violence marked the culmination of weeks of US and British public criticism of al-Jazeera in general and Iraqi TV in particular. Despite the very clear opinion of international legal experts that the stations were protected civilian facilities and could not be legitimately targeted, attacks on both were seen as almost inevitable.
When Iraqi TV in Baghdad was hit by a US missile strike on 25 March, the attack was strongly criticised by press and human rights groups. Amnesty International warned the next day that the attack may have been a "war crime". Bombing a television station "simply because it is being used for the purposes of propaganda" is illegal under international humanitarian law. "The onus," said Amnesty, is on "coalition forces" to prove "the military use of the TV station and, if that is indeed the case, to show that the attack took into account the risk to civilian lives."
In reply British defence secretary Geoff Hoon said that Iraqi state television was part of Saddam Hussein's control, command and communications network.
Human Rights Watch argued that even if that were true, "the principle of proportionality in attack must be scrupulously respected. "This means that planners and military commanders should verify at all times that the risks involved to the civilian population in undertaking such attacks do not outweigh the perceived military benefit.
"Special precautions should be taken in relation to buildings located in urban areas. Advance warning of an attack must be given whenever possible."
"Television stations are not directly targeted in that sense," Hoon told the BBC, (but) "they are part of the military command and control structures and certainly they are dealt with as other parts of the communications system that allows the military to operate in and around Baghdad are similarly dealt with."
During the bombing of Kosovo in 1999, NATO destroyed the headquarters of Serbian TV in Belgrade (RTS), citing the same defence. That attack, along with the bombing of the Taleban-run Afghan radio at the outset of the war in Afghanistan, drew similar charges that such attacks were war crimes.
The IFJ and Reporters Sans Frontiers warned at the time that the RTS attack would set a dangerous precedent for assaults on press freedom, notes Matt Robinson in an article for EPN, citing Israeli attacks on Palestinian media since then and the Indo-Pakistan conflict where media installations on both sides were hit.
Since Kosovo, the US and British military have consistently pushed at the limits of international law by lethally striking at civilian media that they allege y has a dual military role - but which also transmits a message that counters the US-British official line.
When their permanent censorship by cruise missile is preceded by loud objections to their output, it's small wonder that the denials of the military and the diplomats are being disbelieved.
Commenting on the 25 March attack on Iraqi TV International Federation of Journalists general secretary Aidan White told Reuters that "once again, we see military and political commanders from the democratic world targeting a television network simply because they don't like the message it gives out."
And as the US media monitoring groups Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) point out, much of the US media has shown scant concern for the rights of their opposition numbers. It noted that some US reporters "expressed satisfaction" after the 25 March attack.
It cites, among several, New York Times reporter Michael Gordon's appearance on CNN to endorse the attack: "I think the television, based on what I've seen of Iraqi television, with Saddam Hussein presenting propaganda to his people and showing off the Apache helicopter and claiming a farmer shot it down and trying to persuade his own public that he was really in charge, when we're trying to send the exact opposite message, I think, was an appropriate target."
As FAIR point out, "Given such attitudes, perhaps it's not surprising that discussions of the legality of attacking Iraqi TV have been rare in U.S. mainstream media.
"Yet when the White House accused Iraq of violating the Geneva Conventions by airing footage of American POWs, media were eager to engage the subject of international law. It's a shame US media haven't held the US government to the same standards."
The deliberate blurring of the lines dividing journalists from combatants by US and British forces in Iraq sets a dangerous example to other states - not least Iraq, whose treatment of western media was condemned as "scandalous, contemptuous and hostile" by Reporters sans Frontieres general secretary Robert Menard last month.
The cavalier attitude of the US and Britain to the media's rights in time of war, has, by making one group of journalists targets, dramatically increased the risk to all journalists - now and in the future.
http://www.indexonline.org/news/20030408_iraq.shtml
Iraq: Media under attack
US-British forces turning
journalists into targets
The cavalier attitude of the US and Britain to the media's rights in time of war, especially where the media presents a contrary view to their own, has led once again to attacks on civilians, tragic loss of life, and has dramatically increased the risk to all journalists - now and in the future.
On the night of 7-8 April the media became targets of the US-British forces in Iraq. A week after the Iraqi authorities tried to stop him from broadcasting, the US effectively shut al-Jazeera Baghdad correspondent Tariq Ayub down for good, killing him in a missile strike on the station's studio in the city.
A US military spokeswoman has denied that al-Jazeera's TV studio in Baghdad was deliberately targeted. "We did not target al-Jazeera," Major Rumi Nielson-Green told journalists in Qatar. "We only target legitimate military targets."
The station didn't believe her. "I will not be objective about this because we have been dragged into this conflict," al-Jazeera's visibly upset Baghdad correspondent Majed Abdel Hadi told viewers, as monitored by Reuters. "We were targeted because the Americans don't want the world to see the crimes they are committing against the Iraqi people."
The Pentagon has a record here. Hours before the US-backed Afghan Northern Alliance marched into Kabul on 12 November 2001, the US dropped a 500-pound bomb on al-Jazeera's studios in the city. Then as now al-Jazeera said the attack was deliberate; then as now the US denied intentionally targeting it.
Also, then as now, the US preceded its attack with criticism of its coverage. In October 2001, US Secretary of State Colin Powell asked the Emir of Qatar, who partly finances the station, to rein in the station's editorial line and cease its broadcasts of videos of Osama Bin Laden's speeches.
In March 2003, British and US officials criticised the station for broadcasting footage of captured US prisoners of war. US officials say the network is biased toward Iraq and allege that the station airs Iraqi propaganda to gain profitable exclusive footage - a charge the network denies.
In an effort to prevent US attacks al-Jazeera had provided the US forces with the coordinates of its Kabul office and did the same in Baghdad, plus the code of its signal to the satellite transponder - also without effect.
The missile shattered the building in the early hours of the morning. Abu Dhabi TV showed footage of a huge fire blazing from the Jazeera office. Jazeera correspondent Tayseer Alouni, known across the Arab world for his reports from the war in Afghanistan, was seen carrying the wounded Ayub into a car. A cameraman, Zuheir al-Iraqi, was hit in the neck by shrapnel in the blast.
The attacks on Iraqi TV the same night saw its transmitters in the Iraqi capital destroyed in an effort to further demoralise Saddam Hussein's remaining forces. Iraqi television and radio had up to that point continued to broadcast a steady stream of propaganda messages. After the attack it showed only old footage of crowds cheering Saddam and played patriotic music.
In fact it was a bad night for all the media. The Hotel Palestine, home to the international press corps, was accidentally hit by US fire. Reuter cameraman Taras Protsyuk, 35, later died of his wounds. Three other Reuter staff and a Spanish cameraman were also wounded.
The night of violence marked the culmination of weeks of US and British public criticism of al-Jazeera in general and Iraqi TV in particular. Despite the very clear opinion of international legal experts that the stations were protected civilian facilities and could not be legitimately targeted, attacks on both were seen as almost inevitable.
When Iraqi TV in Baghdad was hit by a US missile strike on 25 March, the attack was strongly criticised by press and human rights groups. Amnesty International warned the next day that the attack may have been a "war crime". Bombing a television station "simply because it is being used for the purposes of propaganda" is illegal under international humanitarian law. "The onus," said Amnesty, is on "coalition forces" to prove "the military use of the TV station and, if that is indeed the case, to show that the attack took into account the risk to civilian lives."
In reply British defence secretary Geoff Hoon said that Iraqi state television was part of Saddam Hussein's control, command and communications network.
Human Rights Watch argued that even if that were true, "the principle of proportionality in attack must be scrupulously respected. "This means that planners and military commanders should verify at all times that the risks involved to the civilian population in undertaking such attacks do not outweigh the perceived military benefit.
"Special precautions should be taken in relation to buildings located in urban areas. Advance warning of an attack must be given whenever possible."
"Television stations are not directly targeted in that sense," Hoon told the BBC, (but) "they are part of the military command and control structures and certainly they are dealt with as other parts of the communications system that allows the military to operate in and around Baghdad are similarly dealt with."
During the bombing of Kosovo in 1999, NATO destroyed the headquarters of Serbian TV in Belgrade (RTS), citing the same defence. That attack, along with the bombing of the Taleban-run Afghan radio at the outset of the war in Afghanistan, drew similar charges that such attacks were war crimes.
The IFJ and Reporters Sans Frontiers warned at the time that the RTS attack would set a dangerous precedent for assaults on press freedom, notes Matt Robinson in an article for EPN, citing Israeli attacks on Palestinian media since then and the Indo-Pakistan conflict where media installations on both sides were hit.
Since Kosovo, the US and British military have consistently pushed at the limits of international law by lethally striking at civilian media that they allege y has a dual military role - but which also transmits a message that counters the US-British official line.
When their permanent censorship by cruise missile is preceded by loud objections to their output, it's small wonder that the denials of the military and the diplomats are being disbelieved.
Commenting on the 25 March attack on Iraqi TV International Federation of Journalists general secretary Aidan White told Reuters that "once again, we see military and political commanders from the democratic world targeting a television network simply because they don't like the message it gives out."
And as the US media monitoring groups Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) point out, much of the US media has shown scant concern for the rights of their opposition numbers. It noted that some US reporters "expressed satisfaction" after the 25 March attack.
It cites, among several, New York Times reporter Michael Gordon's appearance on CNN to endorse the attack: "I think the television, based on what I've seen of Iraqi television, with Saddam Hussein presenting propaganda to his people and showing off the Apache helicopter and claiming a farmer shot it down and trying to persuade his own public that he was really in charge, when we're trying to send the exact opposite message, I think, was an appropriate target."
As FAIR point out, "Given such attitudes, perhaps it's not surprising that discussions of the legality of attacking Iraqi TV have been rare in U.S. mainstream media.
"Yet when the White House accused Iraq of violating the Geneva Conventions by airing footage of American POWs, media were eager to engage the subject of international law. It's a shame US media haven't held the US government to the same standards."
The deliberate blurring of the lines dividing journalists from combatants by US and British forces in Iraq sets a dangerous example to other states - not least Iraq, whose treatment of western media was condemned as "scandalous, contemptuous and hostile" by Reporters sans Frontieres general secretary Robert Menard last month.
The cavalier attitude of the US and Britain to the media's rights in time of war, has, by making one group of journalists targets, dramatically increased the risk to all journalists - now and in the future.