ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Rudaw Media Network issued a statement on Thursday regarding Iraqi institutions preventing the work of its employees in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region.
The statement comes after Iraqi officials in Kirkuk and Baghdad issued statements on Wednesday threatening to revoke its television license in Iraq.
Additionally, Rudaw withdrew all staff members and reporters from Kirkuk following death threats from militiamen.
Rudaw has worked in a professional manner and has published accurate information of the developments on the ground. Rudaw underscores that its work is constitutional and essential to the principles of freedom and democracy, the statement said.
Rudaw Media Network is based in the Kurdistan Region. Coverage of the war against ISIS and other work by its reporters has been syndicated by major world networks and agencies. It also has correspondents in Baghdad, Europe, the United States, and has covered events in other Middle Eastern countries.
Rudaw has digital, radio, newspaper, and television portals, which report the news in Kurdish, Arabic, Turkish, and English.
The full statement can be read below:
To the public opinion and all the organizations defending journalism in the world
Today, the Iraqi Joint Command, and a so-called Kirkuk provincial council, issued two statements on preventing journalistic work for Rudaw Media Network, threatening Rudaw. Both of them were contrary to the Iraqi constitution and freedom of press. Whatever has been said in these two statements about spreading fear and encouraging people to flee from Kirkuk and the area is completely false.
Rudaw Media Network has done its work, covering what was happening in a professional manner. Moreover, whatever published by Rudaw was accurate information, documents and videos. Publishing news of arresting people without an arrest warrant, taking the injured out from hospitals and killing them, burning peoples’ homes, the exodus of thousands of people because of the situation, insulting the Kurdish sanctities in the cities of Kirkuk and Khurmatu, would certainly not be what the authority doing these things want people to hear or see. But this is the job of professional and free media and the laws give this right to the media and it is the duty of the media to do this from a professional perspective.
What is more surprising is to see Kirkuk’s provincial council reacting to a video published by Rudaw, saying that the photograph of the founder of the Islamic revolution Ayatollah Khomeini and the photograph of the leader of the Islamic revolution of Iran Ayatullah Khamenei have not been put up in the building of the governorate, while the council has been silent on all these violations and tens of constitutional and legal violations since October 16, 2017.
We declare to the Joint Command and provincial council of Kirkuk, if you protect the security and freedoms of people in practice and are meticulously monitoring the work of Rudaw Media Network, why have you been silent in the face of threats to terrorize Rudaw correspondents in Kirkuk? Why don’t you fulfill your legal and security duties? Following the publication of this statement, we put the responsibility to protect the lives of all the employees of Rudaw Media Network on your shoulders. According to the constitution and principles of freedom and democracy, protecting their lives and their freedom to work is your duty, rather than preventing them from executing their work.
In addition, we will reserve our legal right to, in due time, file a lawsuit in response to any attempt to defame Rudaw Media Network.
We call upon the representative of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI), Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), Reporters Without Borders (RSF), all the organizations advocating for media work, our television colleagues in the European group for exchanging news (ENEX) and all the world’s media establishments to respond and put pressure on the Iraqi government in order to protect the freedom of journalistic work, in the face of these threats and impediments to the media work of Rudaw Media Network and journalists in Kirkuk and its surrounding areas.
Rudaw Media Network
October 18, 2017
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