22/6/2020
Although journalists were excluded from the preventive curfew imposed by the National Health and Safety Cell, security forces prevented many of them from passing for unknown reasons.
Press Freedom Advocacy Association recorded most of the bans that occurred during the period from (18 /3/ 2020) to (13/6/2020) in ten provinces that witnessed the total curfew.
The capital, Baghdad, witnessed (18) cases of denial of photography and coverage, as well as the denial of some workers’ access to their work, and the governorate of Kirkuk (14) cases of prohibition, Karbala, Anbar and Salah al-Din (6) cases of prohibition, then Sulaimaniyah with (4) cases, and Basra with (3) cases, the last of a couple bans recorded in each of Maysan, Dhi Qar and Najaf.
The Baghdad Operations Command decided to cancel all exceptions to the ban on 24 /5/2020, causing many news bulletins and political and dialogue programs to be cancelled in several satellite channels due to the lack of access to their places of work by press and technical staff.
Press Freedom Advocacy Association expresses its astonishment at the chaotic decisions of the movement of journalists and media professionals, and asserts that what is happening is a flagrant violation of the freedom of journalistic work guaranteed by the Iraqi constitution.
The association blames the commander-in-chief of the armed forces for exposing journalists to individual extortion cases by a number of members of the security forces, as a result of the issuance of orders to tighten the curfew.
