MUSLIM HATE OF JOURNALISTS
Taliban Attack
Journalists Covering Kabul Women's Rights Protest
Kabul Women's
Protest: A group of about 20 women marched from near the ministry of education
to the ministry of finance in the Afghan capital.
Updated:
October 21, 2021
Kabul:
The Taliban
struck several journalists to prevent media coverage of a women's rights protest
in Kabul on Thursday.
A group of
about 20 women marched from near the ministry of education to the ministry of
finance in the Afghan capital.
Wearing
colourful headscarves they chanted slogans including: "Don't politicise
education", as traffic drove by shortly before 10 am.
The women held
placards saying: "We don't have the rights to study and work",
and" "Joblessness, poverty, hunger", as they walked with their
arms in the air.
The Taliban
authorities allowed the women to walk freely for around an hour and a half, AFP
journalists saw.
However, one
foreign journalist was struck with the butt of a rifle by one Taliban fighter,
who swore and kicked the photographer in the back as another punched him.
At least two
more journalists were hit as they scattered, pursued by Taliban fighters
swinging fists and launching kicks.
Zahra
Mohammadi, one of the protest organisers, told AFP the women were marching
despite the risks they face.
"The
situation is that the Taliban don't respect anything: not journalists --
foreign and local -- or women," she said.
"The
schools must reopen to girls. But the Taliban took this right from us."
High school
girls have been blocked from returning to classes for more than a month, while
many women have been banned from returning to work since the Taliban seized
power in mid-August.
"My
message to all girls and women is this: 'Don't be afraid of the Taliban, even
if your family doesn't allow you to leave your home. Don't be afraid. Go out,
make sacrifices, fight for your rights'," Mohammadi said.
"We have
to make this sacrifice so that the next generation will be in peace."
Children
walked alongside the protest in downtown Kabul, although it was unclear if they
were part of the organised group.
Some Taliban
fighters policing the march wore full camouflaged combat gear, including body
armour, helmets and knee pads, while others were wearing traditional Afghan
clothing.
Their weapons
included US-made M16 assault rifles and AK-47s.
Unthinkable
under the hardline Islamist group's last rule in the 1990s, Afghans have staged
street protests across the country since the Taliban returned to power,
sometimes with several hundred people and many with women at forefront.
But a ban on
unauthorised demonstrations has meant protests against Afghanistan's new
masters have dwindled.
Saudis
preparing to admit Jamal Khashoggi died during interrogation, sources say
By Clarissa Ward and Tim Lister, CNN
October
15, 2018
Ankara, Turkey (CNN)The Saudis are preparing a report that will acknowledge
that Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi's death was the result of an
interrogation that went wrong, one that was intended to lead to his abduction
from Turkey, according to two sources.
One source says the report will likely conclude that the operation was carried
out without clearance and transparency and that those involved will be held
responsible.
One of the sources acknowledged that the report is still being prepared and
cautioned that things could change.
The Washington Post columnist was last seen in public when he entered the Saudi
consulate in Istanbul in Turkey on October 2. Previously, Saudi authorities had
maintained Khashoggi left the consulate the same afternoon of his visit, but
provided no evidence to support the claim.
CCTV footage shows Khashoggi entering the Saudi consulate on October 2.
Khashoggi's fiancée, Hatice Cengiz, who was waiting outside the consulate, says
she did not see him re-emerge.
The disappearance created a diplomatic rift between Saudi Arabia and the West.
Amid the fallout, international firms pulled out of a high-profile investment
summit, the Future Investment Initiative conference, due to take place later
this month in Riyadh.
The case also caused friction between Saudi Arabia and Turkey, which repeatedly
accused the Saudis of failing to cooperate with their investigation.
Turkish authorities previously said they believed that 15 Saudi men who arrived
in Istanbul on October 2 were connected to Khashoggi's disappearance and
possible murder. At least some of them appear to have high-level connections in
the Saudi government.
On Friday, a source familiar with the investigation told CNN that Turkish
authorities have audio and visual evidence that shows journalist Khashoggi was
killed inside the consulate.
CNN reporters saw Turkish investigators, including forensics officers, entering
the Saudi consulate in Istanbul Monday evening. Saudi officials granted
permission for the premises to be searched, a Turkish diplomatic source told
CNN. Police were seen cordoning off the area before investigators arrived.
Turkish officials also wanted to search the nearby consul general's residence.
Earlier Monday, President Donald Trump suggested that "rogue killers"
could be behind Khashoggi's disappearance, after a phone call with Saudi
Arabia's King Salman about the case. Trump said King Salman told him "in a
very firm way that they had no knowledge of it."
Later Monday, Trump said he had seen the latest media reports. But he said he
did not know if the report is accurate or just "rumor."
The President said he remains eager to get to the bottom of what happened to
Khashoggi. He noted that Turkey and Saudi Arabia are "working
together" to determine what happened.
The President said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will "immediately get on
a plane" to Saudi Arabia and will likely also go to Turkey "if
necessary." On the airplane, State Department Spokesperson Heather Nauert
told reporters that Secretary Pompeo "looks forward to meeting with King
Salman."
Religious leaders encourage retaliation against journalists at Grozny mosque
meeting
Novaya Gazeta
14
april 2017
The newspaper Novaya Gazeta has urged the Russian government to respond to
calls for retaliation against journalists voiced, the editors claim, by Islamic
theologians in Chechnya on April 3.
The meeting in the central mosque of Grozny was convened in connection with the
publication of Novaya Gazeta’s article on the persecution of homosexuals in the
Chechen Republic. According to the publication Grozny-Inform, 15,000 people
attended the meeting.
Meeting participants adopted a resolution in which they declared that the
Novaya Gazeta journalists had “insulted the centuries-old foundations of
Chechen society and the dignity of Chechen men,” as well as their faith. “We
promise that the true instigators will be subjected to retribution, wherever
and whoever they are, without statute of limitations,” the resolution read.
“It is obvious to us that this resolution is pushing religious fanatics to
massacre journalists,” said Novaya Gazeta’s editorial board.
Journalists demanded that Russian authorities evaluate the resolution “from [a
legal] point of view” and urged them “to do everything possible to stop any actions
aimed at inciting hatred and enmity towards journalists fulfilling their
professional duties.”
Novaya Gazeta’s appeal was published on the evening of April 13. Soon, its
website stopped working temporarily. “Technical support has informed us about a
possible DDoS attack,” wrote Novaya Gazeta journalists on Facebook. The website
resumed operation as of 11:30 pm Moscow time on April 13.
“Silence and inaction in this situation make all who are able to do something,
accomplices. This is why Novaya Gazeta continues to work in Chechnya. But we
are very aware of a high price we can pay. The unresolved murders of our
colleagues Anna Politkovskaya and Natalia Estemirova serve as obvious proof,”
read the newspaper’s statement.
In early April, Novaya Gazeta reported that more than 100 people were detained
on suspicion of being homosexuals in Chechnya in recent months. According to
the publication, detainees were kept in secret prisons, tortured, and forced to
denounce other homosexuals; three people were killed. Chechen authorities
called these statements a lie.
On April 11, Novaya Gazeta and human rights organization Agora appealed to a
court in light of the inaction of Russia’s Investigative Committee, which did
not respond to reports of the crime within 10 days, as required by law.
Journalists Punched, Kicked, And Rammed With Car In Sweden’s ‘Little
Mogadishu’ No-Go Zone
by LIAM DEACON
20
Mar 2016
breitbart.com
An Australian TV station has released a shocking report showing its crew being
attacked by masked men in a Stockholm suburb know as ‘Little Mogadishu’ due to
it’s primarily Somali population.
Since the report was filmed last month, Swedish police have dropped all
charges, despite the migrants throwing missile and punches, fly kicking the
journalist, and even running one over with a car.
The Channel Nine crew and high-profile Australian news correspondent, Liz
Hayes, had traveled to the Swedish capital to investigate how the migrant
“overload” has affected Swedish society.
Upon entering a migrant area, Rinkeby, they were quick to discover some of
those effects, and why it is that they have become known as “no-go zones”.
“They were confronted by a group who objected to them filming. There was a
series of scuffles and the police were called.
“The 60 Minutes cameraman and producer were slightly injured but filming
continued with police at the scene. The crew have now returned to their hotel
and are all fine,” a spokesman for the channel told the Local.
A spokesman for Stockholm’s police force, Lars Byström, confirmed that the crew
had filed a report, but only about a specific incident.
“We were told there was a film team and there were some youngsters who were in
the car and there was some kind of argument between the team and then the
driver drove over the cameraman’s foot.”
However, he later said that police had decided to close the case as “very
experienced police officers” had made the decision to focus their resources
elsewhere.
Several newspapers, such as the Sydney Morning Herald, have attempted to
discredit the Channel Nine report by pointing out that the crew was shown
around by a man who writes for a website with links to the Sweden Democrats.
However, the anti-mass migration right-leaning party is a mainstream political
force in Sweden, which has been commanding record levels of support among the
electorate.
They were guided to the no-go zone by one Jan Sjunnesson who writes for
Avpixlat, a news outlet that has accused other Nordic media of suppressing the
debate on immigration.
“We categorically deny any suggestion we were in cahoots with this organization
[Avpixlat], we merely interviewed them in an effort to get all sides of the
story,” a spokesman for Channel Nine news told the Sydney Morning Herald.
Attacks on media reported at Islamist "no violence" rally
21/06/2013
Egyptian Independent
Hundreds of Islamists flocked to Rabaa al-Adaweya Mosque in Nasr City on Friday
to join rallies supporting President Mohamed Morsy and condemning political
violence.
However, the huge demonstration has developed against the backdrop of claims
from media organisations that they have faced physical assaults.
The rally, dubbed "No violence...Yes to peaceful protests," was
arranged by several Islamist groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood and its
political wing, the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP).
Islamist youth groups monitored traffic flow in the streets surrounding the
mosque ahead of Friday prayers. Street vendors sold their wares not far from
the main platform for the protests.
The Muslim Brotherhood is reportedly expecting over 30 Islamist groups and
parties to join the event.
The FJP's youth secretary, Ayman Abdel Ghany, said Thursday that all protesters
would congregates outside the Rabaa al-Adaweya Mosque at 3 pm on Friday after
prayers.
"The mass demonstrations call for the peaceful expression of opinion,
renouncing violence and aim to uncover those who want to drag the country into
a vortex of violence and chaos," Abdel Ghany posted on his Facebook page.
Abdel Ghany added that Islamists would not take part in violence, thereby
giving their detractors an opportunity to cause bloodshed and destroy the
country.
This tactic would also give the security services the chance to handle thugs
infilitrating peaceful protests, the FJP official claimed.
However, BBC Arabic reported that its team covering the "no violence"
protest had been assaulted Friday afternoon.
BBC Arabic reported that pro-Morsy protesters insulted members of its team and
targeted its staff with empty water bottles. The protesters reportedly accused
“corrupt media” of trying to undermine the “Islamic project.”
Dozens topped the broadcasting van and tried to assault the team, BBC Arabic
said, adding that the team withdrew from the area, unable to continue its work
safely.
Privately-owned Egyptian broadcaster OnTV also reported coming under attack
from marchers armed with "sticks and rods." Assailants also smashed
the TV crew's cameras.
Earlier OnTV Live broadcast images of Islamist marchers apparently practising
martial arts away from the crowds.
The latest Islamist call for non-violence runs counter to statements made by
some radical preachers over the past week, in which clerics promoted the use of
violence against opposition demonstrations against President Mohamed Morsy
planned for 30 June.
Radical Islamist preacher Wagdy Ghoneim said Friday that protests demanding the
downfall of President Morsy represented a war between Islam and its
“enemies."
Speaking in a YouTube video on his own channel, Ghoneim claimed that anyone
rallying for the president's ouster is "an infidel and should be
killed."
"Islam urged us to obey our rulers," he added. "Our president is
an elected and legitimate one."
Angry crowd turns on journalists reporting embassy attack in Egypt
From Ivan Watson, CNN
September 10, 2011 8:54 p.m. EDT
Cairo (CNN) -- An angry crowd lingering near
the Israeli embassy in Cairo after an attack on the building a day earlier
turned on journalists reporting the incident Saturday, accusing at least one of
being an Israeli spy.
As a CNN crew filmed the embassy from across
the street, another crew from American public television -- led by Egyptian
television producer Dina Amer -- approached the building.
The crew's Russian cameraman was preparing to
film the embassy when a woman in the crowd began hurling insults at the TV
team, Amer said.
"There was this older lady who decided to
follow me and rally people against me," Amer recalled.
"She said 'you're a spy working with the
Americans.' Then they swarmed me and I was a target."
A growing crowd surrounded Amer and her
colleagues, as they tried to leave the scene.
Mohamed Fadel Fahmy, a producer working for
CNN, rushed to help escort Amer through the angry crowd. But suddenly the two
reporters were pinned against the railing of an overpass by young men who were
accusing Amer of being an Israeli spy.
Yelling "I'm Egyptian," Fahmy managed
to pull Amer another 10 meters down the road, until the pressure from the mob
overwhelmed the pair.
Amer screamed as she and Fahmy were knocked to
the ground and the crowd started to trample them.
Other CNN journalists tried to reach in to
help, but were pushed back by a wall of angry men.
Fahmy lay on top of Amer, shielding her with
his body.
"I was thinking, how powerless I was
because there was no police to save us," Fahmy said. "I was worried
that they were going to rape her."
At that moment, a student bystander named
Mohammed el Banna called out to the journalists and pointed out a nearby car.
Somehow, Fahmy managed to carry Amer to the
open door of the public television crew's car, where two of her female
colleagues were waiting just a few feet away.
The mob pounded on the windows and tried to
reach into the vehicle as the panicked reporters fumbled and struggled to get
behind the steering wheel.
When Margaret Warner, a correspondent with the
PBS program "Newshour" managed to get the vehicle moving away from
the crowd, men threw stones at the departing vehicle.
Amer had few words to describe the terrifying
ordeal.
"They were animals," she said.
Other Egyptian journalists told CNN they were
also attacked Saturday while trying to report near the Israeli embassy.
Ahmed Aleiba, a correspondent with Egyptian
state television, said he was pursued by civilians and soldiers.
"I had to run because obviously they were
targeting journalists," Aleiba said in a phone call with CNN. "They
attacked two other TV crews."
"I was in the car getting ready to film. A
soldier knocked on the window with his stick and said 'if you don't leave by
midnight your car will be destroyed,"" said Farah Saafan, a video
journalist with the English-language newspaper Daily News Egypt.
Journalists have been targeted before in Cairo.
On February 2, dozens of journalists of
different nationalities were beaten and pursued around the city while trying to
report on pro-Mubarak demonstrations. The day descended into one of brutal
street violence, as pro-regime supporters backed by men on horses and camels
attacked opposition demonstrators on what became known as the "Battle of
the Camel."
And CBS News correspondent Lara Logan suffered
a brutal sexual assault in Tahrir Square while covering the celebrations that
followed former President Hosni Mubarak's resignation on February 11.
On Saturday, as some journalists ran for their
lives from the Israeli Embassy, the interim government was holding crisis talks
with Egypt's ruling military council and top intelligence chief.
The emergency session concluded with a pledge
to honor Egypt's international treaties and defend foreign embassies. The
government also announced plans to re-activate the country's 30-year-old
emergency law.
Application of the law had lapsed since the
overthrow of Mubarak, according to a senior official in the National Security
Directorate, who spoke to CNN on condition of anonymity.
One of the five measures announced after
Saturday's crisis talks calls on authorities to make "media and political
powers accountable for inciting security lapses."
"It's obvious that there is some sort of
plan leading to military rule in this country," warned Egyptian state TV's
Aleiba. "The next step will be martial law."
Cairo mob brutally assaulted CBS reporter Lara
Logan
By Michael
Winter, USA TODAY
Feb 15, 2011
A mob in Tahrir Square brutally beat and
sexually assaulted CBS News' chief foreign correspondent, Lara Logan, who was
covering Friday's celebration of the departure of former president Hosni
Mubarak, the network says. She is in a U.S. hospital recovering.
CBS says Logan, who was reporting for 60 Minutes, was
surrounded by more than 200 people "whipped into frenzy." She then
became separated from her TV crew and security and then suffered a "brutal
and sustained sexual assault and beating." She was saved by a group of
women and about 20 Egyptian soldiers, and reconnected with her colleagues CBS
says. Saturday she flew back to the United States and is now in a hospital. The
network said it would have no further comment.
The Washington Post notes that
39-year-old Logan, who joined CBS in 2002, is the mother of two young children.
She met her husband, Joe Burkett, a defense contractor, in Baghdad while
covering the war.
The attack highlights the risks female
journalists face, The Atlantic's Garance Franke-Ruta
writes.
Most mainstream American news outlets have a
policy of not naming the survivors of sexual assault and it is hard to imagine
that CBS would have issued this statement, which landed like a thunderbolt in
the close-knit media world, without Logan's permission. That makes her one very
brave woman, as news of the attack ricocheted across Twitter and newspapers
with lightning speed.
Bakery leader embraced guns long before
editor's killing
By Thomas Peele, Bob Butler and Mary Fricker
The Chauncey Bailey Project
The Mercury News
12/14/2008
OAKLAND — Yusuf Bey IV was heavily involved in
guns and gun violence well before the killing of journalist Chauncey Bailey
last year — a killing he is suspected of ordering — despite his claims to
police that he didn't allow weapons at Your Black Muslim Bakery and disavowed
their use.
Recorded jailhouse telephone calls and three
statements given to police before and after Bailey's Aug. 2, 2007, killing
implicate Bey IV in a 2006 shooting of a car belonging to the former boyfriend
of a woman with whom he was involved and a June 2007 shootout at a San
Francisco nightclub. He was not charged in either incident.
The statements, though, given by two former
bakery workers and the person whose car was shot dozens of times, portray Bey
IV as an out-of-control gang leader obsessed with violence and power, yet one
who ordered followers to commit crimes rather than dirty his own hands.
Oakland police Assistant Chief Howard Jordan
declined a request for an interview. Bey IV's lawyer, Anne Beles, did not
return messages.
The Chauncey Bailey Project is not identifying
the workers for their safety.
One worker told police, in a recording, that
men at the organization had to prove their "loyalty to him. But it's like,
he's the boss, you do what he say."
In a recorded jail telephone call, the same
worker called Bey IV's followers "little errand boys. That's how all of
them are, that's how come all of them are in jail.
If you're so big and bad, you'd go do that
(expletive) yourself."
"He's a punk. He's a little wimp. He
wouldn't do that (expletive) on his own at all," a man with whom the
worker was speaking replied.
Another bakery worker said of Bey IV to
detectives: "He's living in this box, and he couldn't see out of it. It's
like he didn't know the real world compared to Your Black Muslim Bakery."
Authorities now say Bey IV ordered Bailey
killed because the journalist was working on a story about the bakery's
bankruptcy filing and internal strife. The only person charged in the shotgun
slaying, bakery dishwasher Devaughndre Broussard, confessed to the killing,
then recanted and pleaded not guilty. He is to stand trial next year.
Bey IV has said he had no involvement in the
journalist's killing. He and three followers are jailed without bail in an
unrelated kidnapping and torture case for which he faces a life sentence if
convicted. Another follower pleaded guilty to lesser charges in exchange for
testimony.
The handling of the case, led by homicide
detective Sgt. Derwin Longmire, is being investigated by the Oakland police
internal affairs and the state attorney general. Longmire will transfer to the
patrol division in February — a reassignment police described as routine, not
related to his work on the Bailey case.
Longmire's lawyer, Michael Rains, said his
client did nothing wrong.
"He was not protecting Yusuf Bey IV, nor
has he protected any member of the bakery. He was urging the police department
to involve itself in an aggressive investigation of the bakery," Rains
said.
The Chauncey Bailey Project reported in October
that Longmire failed to document in his case notes evidence linking Bey IV to a
conspiracy to kill the journalist, including data from a tracking device that
showed Bey IV was outside Bailey's apartment seven hours before the killing.
The Alameda County District Attorney's Office
is investigating Bailey's killing independently of Oakland police.
The Bailey Project reported in October that one
of the workers also told police that the night before the Bailey killing that
Bey IV, Broussard, and another man, Antoine Mackey, prayed for strength. Bey IV
also complained that he had to awaken at 5 a.m. the next day, Aug. 2, the
worker said.
A man who worked at the bakery has also told
police that Bey IV came to him about dawn and borrowed his white van, which had
no license plates. Witnesses told police they saw a masked gunman kill Bailey
and run to a waiting white van without license plates.
After the killing, the worker told police that
Bey IV boasted, "that will teach them to (expletive) with me,"
according to a police recording.
Longmire also failed to challenge Bey IV in
recorded interviews. Experts, including a retired judge, who listened to
recordings, said he was deferential to the then 21-year-old bakery leader, who
he had befriended. "He sounded like a defense attorney leading a
witness," said one Oakland officer who listened to the recordings and
spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisals.
In the recordings, Bey denies firearm use,
although witness accounts contradict him.
According to Bey: "We never had to resort
to gun violence, since I've been on the bakery. It's always, you know,
face-to-face, it's just unarmed."
But in early December, Bey IV ordered followers
to shoot up a car belonging to a man, Cameren Cook, who had argued with one of
his half brothers, Yusuf Bey V, a bakery worker told police.
"They were ordered to do it," the
worker said of the shooters to police. Among them, the worker said, was
Broussard. "It's basically what (Bey IV) says goes."
The worker told police that Bey IV had to be
talked out of having Cook killed, choosing to destroy the car instead.
In June 2007, Bey IV arrived at a San Francisco
nightclub toting a loaded AK-47 assault rifle, another bakery worker told
police. Several of his followers were working as security guards there when
gunfire erupted.
One person was wounded and San Francisco police
made five arrests on gun charges. Bey IV hid the rifle in the back of a
Corvette belonging to another of his half-brothers, Yusuf Bey III, and slipped
away, the worker told Oakland police.
San Francisco police found the gun in the
Corvette the day after the nightclub shooting. An officer said ballistics tests
were performed, but it remained unclear if the weapon was linked to any other
incidents.
Bombs going off
A few minutes before 2 a.m. on Dec. 7, 2006, a
barrage of gunfire erupted at Aileen and Gaskill streets in North Oakland.
Cameren Cook, who had worked at the bakery as a teenager, found his Mitsubishi
riddled by more than 30 shotgun and rifle rounds.
"It sounded like bombs going off,"
Cook told police months later in a recorded statement. He immediately suspected
members of the bakery because of a dispute he had with Yusuf Bey V, the
leader's half brother.
Cook, who could not be reached for comment,
told police that Bey IV was enamored with guns and that he had seen the bakery
leader wearing a holstered large caliber pistol on his hip.
No arrests have been made in the incident.
A bakery worker familiar with the shooting told
police in August 2007 that Bey IV ordered the shooting, leading about half a
dozen armed men to Cook's residence but then left before the gunfire. The
worker told police that Bey IV had to be talked out of having Cook killed.
The worker told police that Bey IV told the
gunmen —‰'wait until I'm around the corner, wait 'til I drive off and get
around the corner' and then. So it's not like he was there, he was but he
wasn't."
"They were ordered to do it," the
worker said of the shooters.
After the shooting, the gunmen followed Bey
IV's orders to split up and take divergent routes back to the bakery. The
leader gathered "up all the guns that they used and he came back in and
went to bed like it was nothing," said the worker.
The weapons included AK-47 assault rifles and a
black sawed-off shotgun used eight months later to kill Bailey.
Nightclub shooting
Seven months after the car shooting, in June
2007, several of Bey IV's followers were apparently working as security guards
at the Fanatics nightclub on Caesar Chavez Street in San Francisco.
The crowd turned unruly, according to police
reports. Bey IV arrived at the scene in a red Corvette owned by another of his
half brothers, Yusuf Bey III. He soon sped back across the Bay to Oakland,
where he grabbed an AK-47 assault rifle and returned to San Francisco, another
bakery worker familiar with his actions told police in a recorded statement.
Back at the nightclub, more than 300 people
were milling about. Bey IV took the assault rifle from the car's trunk and
began to approach the crowd when gunfire broke out, the bakery worker said.
Bey IV threw the weapon back into the car as
police moved in, the worker told police. A man running away was shot in the
foot. Police arrested six people on gun charges.
Bey IV abandoned his half-brothers Corvette and
slipped away. The next day, police responded to the car's alarm going off and
found the fully-loaded AK-47 and confiscated the vehicle.
San Francisco police Lt. Mikail Ali said
Oakland police contacted his department about the statement obtained concerning
the nightclub shootout. San Francisco officers then told Oakland police a gun
had been found that may have been used in the Cook car shooting.
Neither department brought charges. Ali said it
is uncertain if anyone investigated whether the gun from the Corvette was used
in shooting seven months before.
"That's not clear. You'd have to do
ballistics tests," he said. Another officer said the tests were done by
the state Department of Justice and likely sent to Oakland. Oakland police
refused to comment on the case.
By Shaikh Azizur Rahman
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
October 22, 2005
DHAKA, Bangladesh -- A chill ran down the spine
of journalist Mizanur Rahman when a neatly folded white cloth symbolizing an
Islamic burial shroud tumbled out of a package he received by mail last month.
An accompanying letter addressed to Mr. Rahman, a reporter for the Dhaka daily
Janakantha (People's Voice), said that because of his "anti-Islamic"
reporting, his days were numbered and he would soon be in a white burial
shroud.
White shrouds and death threats also reached eight other journalists the same
day in Satkhira, a district in southwestern Bangladesh.
The letters were signed by leaders of the outlawed militant group Jagrata
Muslim Janata Bangladesh (Awakened Muslim Citizens of Bangladesh, often
referred to by its initials, JMJB), the orthodox Islamist movement Ahl-e-Hadith
(followers of the Sayings of the Prophet) and Jamat-e-Islami Bangladesh, an
Islamist political party in the ruling coalition in Bangladesh. The letters
threatened that the journalists would be "slaughtered" because their
writings attacked clerics who want to transform the country into a pure Islamic
state.
"We are determined to bring total Islamic rule in Bangladesh through an
armed revolution," the letters said. "You are some of the obstacles
on our way to achieve these goals. You are the country's enemies, so you face
removal from this Earth."
Of the nine reporters who received these death threats, five are Hindus, and
the letters warned them that as non-Muslims, they had no right to report on
Islamic matters.
Kalyan Banerjee, a Hindu reporter for the popular Dhaka daily Pratham Alo
(First Light), said: "In the letter accompanying the kafan (burial shroud)
they said to me, Hindu religious functions would not be allowed in Pak Bangla
(Holy Bangladesh) and no Hindu will be allowed to vote in the next
parliamentary elections in Bangladesh. They will be slaughtered if they try to
vote."
Mr. Banerjee, who reported on growing Islamist extremist activities in the area
in a recent series of reports, said that he is also getting threatening calls
from unknown people on his cell phone.
JMJB and Ahl-e-Hadith, among other Islamist groups, were accused of
masterminding the Aug. 17 violence in which more than 400 bombs exploded
simultaneously across Bangladesh, killing two persons and injuring more than
200.
This month, the authorities announced a reward of $15,200 for information
leading to the arrest of underground JMJB chief Siddiqur Islam, alias Bangla
Bhai.
Also this month, JMJB claimed responsibility for a series of Oct. 3 courtroom
bombings in three towns that killed two persons and injured more than 50. The
radical group has been campaigning to establish strict Islamic rule in
Bangladesh, a Muslim-majority country governed by secular laws.
Statistics suggest that journalism is a dangerous profession in Bangladesh. In
the past10 years, at least 19 journalists have been murdered and more than 800
have been injured in attacks by Islamist fundamentalists, political parties,
criminals and various government agencies including the police.
Dipankar Chakrabarty, editor of a regional daily Durjoy Bangla (Invincible
Bangla) was hacked to death with a machete in the central town of Sherpur last
October.
Before his death, he told Reporters Without Borders that anonymous callers were
threatening him by phone with death if he did not stop reporting on the ties
between some powerful politicians and a criminal organization in the area.
In January 2004, a bomb in the southwestern
district of Khulna killed Manik Saha, a reporter for the Dhaka daily New Age
and stringer for the British Broadcasting Corp.
Some of his colleagues think Mr. Saha was killed because of his book
investigating shrimp mafias who were converting paddy fields into shrimp farms,
damaging the environment. The veteran journalist received many death threats by
phone before he was slain.
A banned extremist Maoist group called Purba Bangla Communist Party (PBCP)
claimed responsibility for the Saha murder. A week after the killing, PBCP
threatened nine other reporters with death if they did not stop writing about
the dead reporter.
In another bomb attack at Khulna in February, the PBCP injured three
journalists and killed Belal Ahmed, a reporter with the national daily Dainik
Sangram (Daily Struggle). The Maoist group -- which claimed to have killed four
journalists, all "enemies of the poor" -- says it has 30 other
journalists on its hit list.
Golam Mortoza, executive editor of Weekly 2000, an investigative weekly,
recently received a death threat from unknown groups. He said in Dhaka that
many politically frustrated ex-Maoist cadres had formed criminal gangs who are
targeting journalists reporting on extortion and racketeering.
Sumi Khan, a Weekly 2000 crime reporter who was stabbed by unidentified
assailants last year, agrees. "I was targeted because I reported how
religious extremists, criminal mafias and illegal gunrunners were thriving in
my area," she said.
"Such attacks on the media throughout the
country try to block the free flow of information."
Mrs. Khan, who narrowly escaped death, was awarded the Guardian newspaper's
Hugo Young Award for courageous journalism in London this year.
Although most of the journalists threatened in Bangladesh exposed corruption,
crime and growing religious extremism, some have been targeted for revealing
the covert activities of politicians.
"At election time, the major political parties accept help from shady
political elements to win votes," said Naim Islam Khan, president of the
Bangladesh Center for Development, Journalism and Communication.
"Some take donations from criminal gangs, providing protection in
exchange," so reporters exposing such politician-criminal connections face
threats to their lives.
Although police have registered more than a thousand cases of violence against
journalists in the past10 years, nearly all cases remain unsolved.
Journalists in Bangladesh have even been targeted by the government.
Nurul Kabir, executive editor of the Dhaka daily New Age, thinks reporters in
Bangladesh are targeted by parts of the government because they expose
activities or plans that many citizens oppose.
"Journalists who are critical about
corruption and malfeasance in ruling circles are being targeted -- especially
outside the capital -- by activists supporting the ruling coalition. They are
also attacked by supporters of the main opposition Awami League when they
reveal its indifference toward people's suffering," Mr. Kabir said.
In 2002, Saleem Samad, a stringer for Time magazine, was detained by the army
for helping a British Channel 4 team film a documentary on Islamist extremism
and persecution of minority Hindus in Bangladesh.
Mr. Samad was released after 55 days of detention, following protests from
human- and media-rights groups outside the country.
"[The army] told me to sign a statement admitting that I engaged in
activities detrimental to the national interest. When I refused to sign the
false statement, they started torturing me in a dark, tiny cell. They did not
give me enough food and water. I was released only after the High Court ruled
that my detention was illegal," said Mr. Samad.
Last year, when Mr. Samad was in Canada to attend an international seminar, the
army, apparently at the behest of the government, raided his home in Dhaka
looking for him. Friends and relatives advised him not to return to Bangladesh,
and the 52-year-old journalist has applied for political asylum in Canada.
"Although I don't like to live in a foreign land, I cannot return to my
country. I know this time they would kill me. They are angry because of my last
Time write-up which described Bangladesh as a country in utter
'dysfunction,' " said Mr. Samad, who is now living in Ottawa as a
refugee as the Canadian government considers his application for asylum.
"Death threats are becoming a pervasive and insidious part of daily life
for journalists in Bangladesh," said Christopher Warren, president of the
International Federation of Journalists. "The intimidation [of
journalists] is a direct violation of civil rights and liberties, which are the
basic tools for a successful democracy."
The bitter rivalry between Begum Khaleda Zia, the prime minister of Bangladesh,
and opposition leader Sheikh Hasina Wajed has polarized the whole country. Even
journalists are now politicized to a point where individual editors, reporters
and newspapers are better known for their political leanings than for the
contents of their work.
A senior editor at a popular daily in Dhaka said: "Until a few years ago,
you would find most of us with independent views, but now we are either Khaleda
Zia supporters or belong to Sheikh Hasina's camp. Unless the two groups are
reunited, journalists will continue to be attacked in Bangladesh. But this will
never happen unless the two top political leaders come to good terms."
Newspapers gagged over cartoon slur
February 04, 2006
The council of Muslim theologians has obtained
a court interdict barring newspapers under the Johncom and Independent groups
from publishing the controversial cartoons of the prophet Mohammed. The order
means that the Sunday Times, Sunday Tribune, and the The
Independent will not publish the cartoons.
Mondli Makhanya, the Sunday Times editor, says the paper had opposed the
council's application on the principle that it should not be dictated to by any
outside influences.
Ferial Hafajee, the Mail and Guardian editor, says she regrets any harm
caused by the weekly's publishing of one of the controversial cartoons
depicting the prophet Mohammed. The paper yesterday published the cartoon.
The picture is one of 12 originally published in a Danish newspaper in
September last year. They have subsequently appeared on several European
newspapers, sparking outrage in the Muslim world. Hafajee says the intention
was to show readers what the outcry is about.
Editor to be tried
over Mohammed cartoon
From correspondents in
Jakarta
July 21, 2006
AN Indonesian editor detained for posting cartoons of the
Prophet Mohammed on his newspaper website earlier this year has been released
from prison but will face trial for offending Islam.
Teguh Santosa, 35,
was freed from a Jakarta prison last night after being held there for 24 hours
by the prosecutor's office, police detective Aries Syarif Hidayat said.
Mr Santosa, who is the
chief editor of the Rakyat
Merdeka Online newspaper, will still have to face trial for
publishing the cartoons in February, Hidayat said.
He faces a maximum five
years' imprisonment if convicted.
Prosecutors have charged
Mr Santosa with two counts of "inciting animosity and hatred" towards
Islam.
The Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten first
printed 12 caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed last September and a slew of
other, mostly European, newspapers have followed suit, sparking outrage in the
Muslim world.
Islam considers images of
the prophet to be blasphemous.
Mr Santosa, quoted by the Koran Tempo newspaper today,
said he was only trying to give readers a complete story on the controversial
cartoons.
"It was in accordance
with my job as a journalist," he reportedly said.
Denmark in February
temporarily closed its mission in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim
nation, and warned its nationals to leave the country after weeks of protests.
Ayatollah issues fatwa
calling for two journalists in Azerbaijan to be killed
December 3, 2006
Reporters without borders
Reporters Without Borders
voiced deep concern today about a fatwa (religious decree) issued by an Iranian
ayatollah calling for two journalists in neighbouring Azerbaijan to be killed
for an allegedly blasphemous article. The fatwa’s targets are Rafiq Nazar
Oughlo Taghizadh of the Azerbaijani fortnightly Sanat (“Industry”) and his
editor Samir Sadaght Oughlo.
“We urge the Iranian
authorities to calm people down as there has been a great deal of tension since
the publication of Mohammed cartoons in a Danish newspaper last February,” the
press freedom organisation said. “We also ask the Azerbaijani authorities to do
everything necessary to protect these two journalists.”
Reporters Without Borders
added: “It is deeply shocking and completely unacceptable that religious
fundamentalists should call for the murder of two people who just expressed
their opinions.”
The offending article was
written by Taghizadh, 56, for the newspaper’s 6 November issue. Entitled
“Europe and us,” its claim that European values were superior to those of
Muslim countries sparked outrage in both Azerbaijan (a Muslim country) and
Iran.
Fazel Lankarani (photo), one
of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s leading ayatollah’s, issued the fatwa in
response to appeals for advice from Azerbaijani Muslims. Posted on his website
(www.lankarani.org) on 25 November, it calls for both the “apostate” journalist
who wrote the article and the editor who published it to be killed.
Muslim Mau-Mauing
Rod Dreher
One Dallas journo’s experience
Two years after standing
on the Brooklyn Bridge and watching the second tower fall, I joined the Dallas
Morning News. My wife, a native Dallasite, praises our new city as “a
September 10 kind of place.” She means that the anxieties attending our
post-9/11 New York life simply don’t exist here. The downside is that people
lull themselves into a false sense of security about the Muslim community. From
where I sit, it looks to me as though the entire mainstream media also live in
a September 10 kind of place. We—and I say “we” because I’m part of the dreaded
MSM—really don’t want to know what’s happening among Muslims in Dallas,
Brooklyn, or anywhere else.
Dallas is home to a large and relatively
prosperous Muslim community. The Dallas Central Mosque is Texas’s largest. The
area’s Muslims, though, have had a contentious relationship in recent years
with the Dallas Morning News, mostly because of the paper’s
groundbreaking 2001 reporting on the Holy Land Foundation, whose leadership is
now under federal terrorism indictment. Since then, local Muslim leaders have
engaged in a running dialogue with the News, with the declared aim of
improving relations.
It was in that spirit that Sayyid Syeed, then
head of the Islamic Society of North America, came in, together with a local
delegation, to see the editorial board a few months after I arrived from New
York in 2003. Syeed made a laborious presentation about how journalists needed
to join with the organization in promoting peace, tolerance, and
reconciliation. I knew something about ISNA and asked Syeed why—if his group
truly supported peace and suchlike—its board included members directly linked
to Islamic extremism and anti-Semitism, including the notorious Wahhabi-trained
Brooklyn imam Siraj Wahhaj. The professorial Syeed dropped his polite mask,
shook his fist at me, told me that I would one day “repent,” and compared my
question with a Nazi inquisition.
Hysterical indignation, I soon learned, is the
standard operating procedure for Islamic groups in dealing with the media in
this town. Shortly after the Syeed meeting, I published a column in the News
decrying the media’s evasion of legitimate questions about Islamic figures and
organizations, hoping to shame journalists into posing them. That’s how I
became, in the designation of one (now-defunct) Muslim website dedicated to
criticizing the News, “the new face of hate.”
I then joined that Islamic site’s e-mail
list—which contained several prominent Dallas Muslims—under my own name. Before
the site operators discovered my presence and booted me off, I printed out
e-mails in which participants discussed a plan to approach business and
religious leaders in town and persuade them to lean on the News’s
publisher to fire me as a danger to Muslims. “Dreher needs to be ruined,” one
e-mailer wrote. “When people here [sic] the name ‘Rod Dreher’ the image
of David Duke should appear in their mind’s eye. So, a campaign must be planned
and carefully executed to expose this hate-monger and render him a joke.”
Naturally, I publicized the plans and made sure that copies of the e-mails got
into the hands of the newspaper’s lawyers. That apparently ended that.
I kept making a pest of myself, though,
pointing out in columns and editorial-board blog postings inconvenient truths
about Dallas’s Muslim community—that, for instance, the leading local imam, who
positions himself as an avuncular ecumenicist, had praised on his website the
radical Islamists Hasan al-Turabi and Yusuf Qaradawi as the kind of scholars
American Muslims should consult. I also helped get into the News’s
editorial pages disturbing facts: that the Dallas Central Mosque had
participated in a contest that assigned the best-known work of the fanatical
Islamic revolutionary Sayyid Qutb to teenage readers, for example, and that some
local Muslim leaders had attended a “Tribute to the Great Islamic
Visionary”—that would be the Ayatollah Khomeini—at a suburban mosque.
This December, another delegation of local
Muslim leaders trooped into the News to meet with the editorial board,
mostly to complain about, well, me, and to clear up misunderstandings that my
supposedly biased rantings might have caused among my colleagues. It was a
classic performance. The group obfuscated and bullied, seeking to skirt some
tough questions—such as whether they wanted sharia imposed as the law of the
land—and trying to make the journalists on hand feel guilty for even asking.
What the Muslims were counting on: 1) a lack of specific knowledge about Islam
and Islamic figures on the audience’s part; and 2) the audience’s ideological
sympathy for them as members of a mistrusted minority.
Luckily, we had in the room a News reporter
recently reassigned from our London bureau. He speaks Arabic and had covered
the London subway bombings. When the Muslim group tried to claim that Sayyid
Qutb was a fringe figure, my newsroom colleague said no, he’s not, and one can
easily find his work in Islamic bookshops in England, where it has contributed
to the radicalization of British Muslim youth. So it wasn’t just that right-wing
Dreher guy from New York—traumatized by 9/11, alas for him—asking these
questions. It’s amazing how undone these Muslim leaders become when informed
journalists, refusing to be intimidated into embarrassed silence, confront them
with the facts.
Later, after I blogged about the meeting, the
group’s leader fired off an e-mail to me and my supervisors accusing me of
single-handedly burning every bridge built between the Dallas Muslim community
and the newspaper. I’d hate for that to be true. But far worse for those
bridges to remain standing if built on the dangerous notion that the news media
should always publish happy-clappy news about local Muslims and shun any
healthy suspicion about things such as Khomeini tributes, anti-Jewish and
anti-Christian hate literature showing up in mosque libraries (as happened
here), and the like.
Bakery
raid to elicit string of charges
Handyman has confessed to slaying
editor, police say
Demian Bulwa and Matthai Chakko Kuruvila
San
Francisco Chonicle
Monday,
August 6, 2007
Oakland police will seek formal charges as early as today against several
people associated with Your Black Muslim Bakery, including the alleged killer
of a newspaper editor who had been working on a story about the controversial
group that operates the bakery, the city's assistant police chief said Sunday.
Howard Jordan said Devaughndre Broussard, a 19-year-old handyman at the bakery,
had confessed to fatally shooting Oakland Post Editor Chauncey Bailey, 57, near
his offices Thursday morning. Broussard was one of seven people arrested in
raids the following day.
Jordan said Broussard and others, under investigation for their part in an
alleged string of crimes earlier this year, are part of a splinter group within
the organization founded by the late Yusuf Bey more than 30 years ago.
The splinter group, Jordan said, "promotes violence in the name of the
Muslim faith and contradicts the teachings of (former Nation of Islam leader)
Elijah Muhammad."
Police will also seek charges of kidnapping for ransom in connection with a May
19 incident in which two people were abducted, Jordan said. Alameda County
prosecutors must review evidence in the case - including documents, recordings
and witness statements - and decide on charges by Tuesday.
Jordan said police will not seek charges at this point in two North Oakland
slayings that have been linked to members of the group: the July slayings of
Michael John Wills Jr., 36, and Odell Roberson Jr., 31. Sources have said the
men's deaths may have been linked to the bakery group's effort to
"cleanse" the area near the bakery on San Pablo Avenue.
"There's still a lot left to do in terms of developing leads," Jordan
said.
Referring to Broussard's arrest in Bailey's killing, he said, "We don't
know if he was the only one involved."
The leader of the organization, 21-year-old Yusuf Bey IV, was also arrested
last week in the raids on a $375,000 felony assault warrant issued in San
Francisco. The young man took over the organization after his father, who was
awaiting trial on charges of raping a minor, died in 2003.
San Francisco police said the younger Bey, already charged with vandalizing a
West Oakland liquor store in an effort to curb its alcohol sales, used his BMW
to run over a bouncer after being thrown out of a strip club in April 2006.
Since then, Jordan said, he has missed court dates, prompting the warrant.
Efforts to reach Bey's family members were unsuccessful on Sunday. In the
afternoon, two men stood in the doorway of the bakery on San Pablo Avenue; one
said "No" and closed the door when approached by a reporter.
The business, which last year filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, was boarded up
after the raids. The Alameda County Department of Environmental Health shut it,
saying in a report that problems included a "strong odor of rotting
flesh" and "fish thawing in still water." Grease piled up in
open buckets, and someone disposed of grease in a toilet and in storm drains,
the report said.
"I almost threw up," said Jordan, who was at the raid.
The organization - which has also operated a security firm and a school, among
other businesses - has in the past been praised for its focus on reforming
troubled youth and building self-reliance. But it has been increasingly
criticized for some its members' propensity for violence.
Three parents whose children were arrested in the raids said Sunday they had
been impressed by the bakery's ability to keep kids out of trouble.
The mother of J-Shawn Belser, who is being held at the Santa Rita Jail in
Dublin, said Sunday that she had seen only positive things after he started
working there.
The 18-year-old had become depressed in July 2006 after the fatal shooting in
Oakland of Charles Fort Jr., his 17-year-old best friend and cousin, said Kathy
Belser.
"He just lost his way," she said. "One day, he said, 'I'm going
to try and join the Muslims.' He started reading the Quran. He changed his
life, going to school and working at the bakery."
Her son, she said, was happy and studying to get a GED after dropping out of high
school. With most of his time occupied with work and school, Belser thought her
son was safe.
"I was happy that he was learning to respect himself and respect others
and learn how to be a man - take care of family and take care of
business," Belser said. "He's just a good kid. I know for a fact that
he's not involved in any of this."
Belser, though, said she wished she had heard about the bakery's troubled
history.
"Had I known all these things were being said about the bakery, I wouldn't
have allowed my son to be there at all," she said.
A more ominous note was sounded by a parent who said his child, who had been
detained Thursday by police and later released, had already been threatened.
"These guys, the way they operate, they don't care about anyone,"
said the father. "They'll do whatever they want to whomever they
want."