Damn: Cairo attacks continue; reporter dies from earlier shooting

[tabatha]

New York, February 4, 2011--Journalists in Cairo faced assaults, detentions, and threats again today as supporters of President Hosni Mubarak continued their efforts to obstruct news coverage of protests demanding the Egyptian leader's ouster. While the extent of attacks lessened after a peak on Thursday, ongoing anti-press activities remain at an alarming level that must be halted, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. In addition, a journalist shot a week ago while filming a demonstration died today, a state newspaper reported.

"It is stupefying that the government continues to send out thugs and plainclothes police to attack journalists and to ransack media bureaus," said Mohamed Abdel Dayem, CPJ's Middle East and North Africa program coordinator. "This is doubly outrageous after the embattled president, vice president, and prime minister all expressed various degrees of regret for the unprecedented attacks on the media on Wednesday and Thursday. They vowed to the Egyptian people in public statements and to the press in interviews that such assaults would not be allowed to take place again."

http://cpj.org/2011/02/press-attacks-cairo-reporter-dies.php

[malaise]

1. Sickening

K & R

[riderinthestorm]

2. I'm afraid they learned the lesson of Iran. If you persist in clamping down on the media

sooner or later the protests stop.

Keeping the revolution going via Twitter and FB is possible of course, but Iran demonstrated that if they could shut down the coverage by jailing the journos, it's possible to shut down the protesting.

Despicable and disheartening.

[jobycom]

3. Sad, and infuriating. When a government can't protect the press, it loses legitimacy. nt

[BeFree]

4. They can protect the press

They just choose not to. It's one of the reasons people who have had enough are demanding a change.

Remember the press getting a US missile into their hotel in Baghdad? Bushco set a fine example then, eh?

[atreides1]

5. Wasn't a missile

It was a shell fired by a US tank!

[BeFree]

8. Technically

It was a missile. Like if you throw something out of a moving car it is legally a missile.

But yes, I do believe it was a bushco tank that issued forth the missile directly at the press.

[EFerrari]

9. The Palestine Hotel. Then, there were the two times Rumsfeld bombed

Al Jazeera.

[EFerrari]

7. State TV is deliberately inciting violence.

They are claiming some absurd conspiracy between US, Israel, Hamas, space aliens, is trying to topple the Egyptian state by brainwashing the youth with spies. That sets up Egyptian tea baggers up to be recruited by Mubarak's thugs to set upon anyone who looks like a foreigner or a photographer.

[Inuca]

6. He died today, but

was shot earlier in the week.

Ahmed Mohammed Mahmoud, 36, an Egyptian reporter shot during clashes earlier this week has died of his wounds. Mahmoud is the first reported journalist death in 11 days of turmoil.

He was taking pictures of clashes on the streets from the balcony of his home, not far from central Tahrir Square when he was "shot by a sniper" four days ago. State-run newspaper Al-Ahram says in a report on its website that he died today in hospital.

http://blogs.aljazeera.net/node/3164