5/9/2021
A security force in Kirkuk detained five journalists in the line of duty last Saturday in a Kirkuk village.
The Press Freedom Advocacy Association in Iraq said that the security forces detained Turkish Anatolia news agency correspondent Eugene Jola, agency photographer Hisham Mohammed, NRT correspondent and photographer Dyar Mohammed and Ali Baghdadi, and Kirkuk TV correspondent Alan Yusuf Murad, while covering security incidents in the village of Shaal, in Sarkran district of Debs area of Kirkuk.
Fellow journalists told the association that they were taken to a police station in the area, interrogated and their press equipment examined to make sure they did not cover or photograph any material in the village, before being released after more than two hours of detention.
The Press Freedom Advocacy Association in Iraq considers the detention of fellow journalists a violation of the freedom of press and media work in the country, and a flagrant constitutional violation.
The association rejects the measures adopted by various security forces against journalists while performing their journalistic duties in Kirkuk.
The association calls on the Ministries of Interior and Defense and the office of the commander-in-chief of the armed forces to issue orders and disciplinary sanctions for the violation of the Iraqi constitution by some leaders, and to urge the security elements to respect and act upon the principles of the constitution, otherwise the commander-in-chief of the armed forces would be held responsible for the constitutional violations that are committed almost daily against journalists.
