Washington-Sana
As the demonstrations in the United States of America accelerate and expand in protest against the killing of George Floyd, an African American, by the police in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the facts reveal the police brutality and their repression of journalists and the media in a country that claims democracy and the defense of freedom of opinion and expression.
With American police forces using excessive force to suppress protesters, the American National Post warned that as violence continues across the United States amid protests against racism and police brutality, journalists are threatened, injured and arrested in a number of American cities.
The newspaper pointed out that the videos, pictures and direct pages on the Internet that are circulated on social media show the injury of journalists and the events indicate that press workers are in some cases deliberately targeted by the authorities while the US President Donald Trump, who has long ridiculed the press in terms of Such as "fake news" and "enemy of the people" with any move to stop such attacks.
The newspaper pointed out that the world saw the US authorities for the first time facing the press when the police arrested Omar Jimenez, a journalist from the American CNN news network, while covering the protests, after he complied with the demands of the police with the news crew who broadcast the news to back down where they arrested them. Police arbitrarily, cameras continued to circulate, and the network broadcasts its reporter for more than an hour while Trump went to Twitter later on Saturday to attack major media outlets.
Among other examples, the US police shot the photojournalist Linda Terrado last Friday, after which she underwent surgery and stated that she “was permanently blinded in one of her eyes.” Also, journalist Nick Waters from the Billingcat survey site documented a number of attacks on journalists, where Over 95 incidents of police and security personnel assaulting and wounding media personnel were recorded.
CBS News correspondent also filmed a video clip and the police were shooting at him and his crew as the sound engineer was shot in the arm, among other examples reported by the newspaper.
"The attacks against journalists and media crews covering the demonstrations completely ignore their decisive role in documenting issues of public concern, which is an unacceptable attempt to intimidate them," the committee's monitoring group considered, "stressing that" authorities in cities across the United States need to direct the police not to Targeting journalists. ”
For his part, the American "Business Insider" website revealed that American journalists are calling for an end to the attacks they are subjected to, after the American police launched more than 100 attacks on journalists during their coverage of the protests in the United States.
In an open letter from several groups such as the Professional Journalists Association, Reporters Without Borders, the Committee to Protect Journalists and the National Press Club, the signatories demanded the cessation of the deliberate and destructive targeting of journalists in the field.
And the message added that “and over the past 72 hours the police opened fire and fired rubber bullets, tear gas and pepper spray and used sticks to attack journalists as never before in this nation,” explaining that “when the press is silenced by bullets, you silence the audience’s voice.”
The protests started in Minneapolis, Minnesota, after a video clip showed Floyd struggling to breathe while a white policeman kneeled on his neck until he breathed last week after several police officers helped him carry out his crime, which led to the outbreak of massive demonstrations in dozens of states and American cities in addition to A number of countries in the world condemned the heinous crime and American racism.
Tihama Al-Saidi and Nawal Jalis
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