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Qatar
Foundation of an Arab Committee to Defend Journalists
February 14, 2005
Doha- Mohammad Al-Mekky Ahmed
Source- Al-Hayat Newspaper
The foundation of an Arab Committee for the Defense of Journalists was announced yesterday in the Qatari Capital, Al-Doha. The Committee inaugurated the first of its activities in al-Jezeera TV channel by declaring its solidarity with its chairman, Tayseer Alouny, al-Jezeera's correspondent who is detained in Spain. The Committee members chose the chairman though he is in detention.
"The idea of forming the committee was formulated in the minds of a number of Arab journalists reside in Qatar and medial professionals who work in different media means inside and outside the Arab world, due to what they have observed of the deteriorated situation of human rights in the Arab world, the erosion of the available freedom margins and how these aspects endanger the safety of journalists' life and profession" the committee's sources reported.
"The idea came up because of the increasingly widening space of the wood of unconstitutional procedures restraining freedoms and rights in the Arab world. Such procedures impede the road of the media and press work towards wider horizons. In a time of the Arab press unions' absence or disability to protect their members, or at least alleviate the dangers that face journalists and media professionals" the sources added.
The committee declared its main objectives as: to defend journalists and media professionals in cases pertaining to the media profession, to monitor the trial procedures in consistency with the human rights standards and to make sure that they do not violate human rights standards, to work on improving human rights situation in the Arab world, to oppose the binding freedoms- laws, to call for providing proper work environment for journalists, particularly the free information flow, to unveil the repressive practices committed against journalists and to contribute to disseminate human rights culture among journalists."
The committee will receive funds through the members' subscription and donations. It was strictly affirmed that "the committee will not receive any direct or indirect governmental fund, but it may in on some conditions accept spiritual aids so as to accomplish its assignment with the necessity of announcing about these aids."
The founders are more than 70 journalists from Tunisia, Morocco, Jordan, Sudan, Egypt, Iraq, Algeria, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Ethiopia and Qatar. It was also asserted that the membership of the committee and the possibility of participating in its activities are available to every Arab or non-Arab journalist and media professional from the Arab world or outside it.
The responsible for organizing the establishment conference, Khaled Al Mahmoud said t Al-Hayat that: "the committee will be registered soon". A consultant panel was selected, it includes Arab personalities, such as the former minister of justice Dr. Naguib el-Ne'emy, the chairman of the Masr Association for Culture and Dialogue, Dr.Selim Al-Awa, Consultant Tareq el-Beshry, former vice president of Egypt's State's Council, Mohammad Abdul Qodous, the president of the Freedoms Committee at the Egyptian Press Syndicate, El-Taieb Bakoush, the chairman of the Arab Institute for Human Rights, Haitham Manna, the speaker of the Arab Commission for Human Rights and Naser Othman, the Qatari Journalists' Dean.
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