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11 avril 2003 — Ci-dessous, voici les analyses de l’institut FAIR ( Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting) et de YellowTimes.org sur les attaques portées contre la presse internationale par les forces américaines, le 8 avril à Bagdad. Certaines informations et estimations se recoupent, ce qui donne plus de crédit au jugement général qui émane des deux textes, qui est celui d’un comportement à la fois condamnable et sans la moindre retenue du Pentagone, vis-à-vis de la presse non contrôlée.
Dans cette guerre contre le terrorisme dont la guerre irakienne fait partie, qui est une guerre d’affirmation de l’hégémonie américaine, la question de l’information est évidemment importante sinon vitale et, dans certains cas qui ne cessent d’augmenter en nombre, elle est beaucoup plus importante que la question militaire. La politique d’information du Pentagone ne peut plus être la politique catastrophique de la guerre du Golfe-I, où rien des opérations ne fut montré ; elle ne peut d’autant plus l’être qu’une concurrence sérieuse existe (notamment les nouvelles TV arabes). Il faut montrer des images, pour soutenir la cause budgétaire et médiatique du Pentagone, éventuellement pour influencer décisivement la politique de la direction civile ; et il faut montrer des images sanitized, parfaitement conformes au récit politique et militaire que le Pentagone fait de la guerre. La réponse a été l’intégration des journalistes dans les unités militaires, essentiellement des journalistes anglo-saxons. Dans ce cas, l’ennemi n’est plus la presse en général, mais la presse libre et indépendante, celle qui n’est pas intégrée.
Qu’elle soit par inadvertance ou pas comme la presse en général en laisse le choix, selon une alternative très surréaliste, l’attaque du Pentagone constitue soit un avertissement sérieux à la presse indépendante, soit une déclaration de guerre, selon les réactions que montreront les journalistes. Elle met en évidence que ce qui est considéré comme la fin de la guerre en Irak n’est pas du tout le signe de l’apaisement à l’intérieur du “camp” occidental. Ces incidents du 8 avril appartiennent d’ores et déjà à une tension échappant à la seule crise irakienne, qui déchire l’Occident, et, à l’intérieur de certains pays occidentaux, les autorités constituées et l’opposition.
By FAIR, April 10, 2003
The Pentagon has held up its practice of “embedding” journalists with military units as proof of a new media-friendly policy. On April 8, however, U.S. military forces launched what appeared to be deliberate attacks on independent journalists covering the war, killing three and injuring four others.
In one incident, a U.S. tank fired an explosive shell at the Palestine Hotel, where most non-embedded international reporters in Baghdad are based. Two journalists, Taras Protsyuk of the British news agency Reuters and Jose Cousa of the Spanish network Telecino, were killed; three other journalists were injured. The tank, which was parked nearby, appeared to
carefully select its target, according to journalists in the hotel, raising and aiming its gun turret some two minutes before firing a single shell.
Journalists who witnessed the attack unequivocally rejected Pentagon claims that the tank had been fired on from the hotel. “I never heard a single shot coming from any of the area around here, certainly not from the hotel,” David Chater of British Sky TV told Reuters (4/8/03).
Footage shot by French TV recorded quiet in the area immediately before the attack (London Independent, 4/9/03).
Earlier in the day, the U.S. launched separate but near-simultaneous attacks on the Baghdad offices of Al Jazeera and Abu Dhabi TV, two Arabic-language news networks that have been broadcasting graphic footage of the human cost of the war. Both outlets had informed the Pentagon of their exact locations, according to a statement from the Committee to
Protect Journalists. As with the hotel attack, Pentagon officials claimed that U.S. forces had come under fire from the press offices, charges that were rejected by the targeted reporters.
The airstrike against Al Jazeera killed one of the channel's main correspondents in Iraq, Tareq Ayoub, and injured another journalist, prompting Al Jazeera to try to pull its remaining reporters out of Baghdad for fear of their safety (BBC, 4/9/03). Personnel at Abu Dhabi TV escaped injury from an attack with small-arms fire.
Al Jazeera, which the Bush administration has criticized for airing footage of American POWs, has been attacked several times by U.S. and British forces during the war in Iraq. Its offices in Basra were shelled on April 2, and its camera crew in that city fired on by British tanks on March 29. A car clearly marked as belonging to Al Jazeera was shot at by U.S. soldiers on April 7 (Reporters Without Borders, 4/8/03).
International journalists and press freedom groups condemned the U.S. attacks on the press corps in Baghdad. “We can only conclude that the U.S. Army deliberately and without warning targeted journalists,” Reporters Without Borders declared (4/8/03). We believe these attacks violate the Geneva Conventions,” wrote the Committee to Protect
Journalists in a letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (4/8/03), referring to the protection journalists receive under the laws of war. The attacks on journalists “look very much like murder,” Robert Fisk of the London Independent reported (4/9/03).
But the Pentagon, while expressing regret over the loss of life, rejected the idea that its forces did anything wrong, and appeared to place blame on the press corps for being in Baghdad in the first place: “We've had conversations over the last couple of days, news organizations eager to get their people unilaterally into Baghdad,” said Pentagon spokesperson Victoria Clarke (Associated Press, 4/9/03). “We are saying it is not a safe place; you should not be there.”
Kate Adie, a British war correspondent during the 1991 Gulf War, told Irish radio prior to the war (RTE Radio1, 3/9/03; GuluFuture.com, 3/10/03) that she had received an even more direct threat from the U.S. military: “I was told by a senior officer in the Pentagon, that if uplinks — that is, the television signals out of... Baghdad, for example — were detected
by any planes...of the military above Baghdad... they'd be fired down on. Even if they were journalists.... He said: ' Well...they know this.... They've been warned.' This is threatening freedom of information, before you even get to a war.”
Clarke's claim that “we go out of our way to help and protect journalists” is belied by the U.S.'s pattern of deliberately targeting “enemy” broadcast operations. In the Kosovo War, the U.S. attacked the offices of state-owned Radio-Television Serbia, in what Amnesty International called a “direct attack on a civilian object” which “therefore constitutes a war
crime.” On March 25, the U.S. began airstrikes on government-run Iraqi TV, in what the International Federation of Journalists (Reuters, 3/26/03) suggested might also be a Geneva Convention violation, since it the U.S. was “targeting a television network simply because they don't like the message it gives out.”
Al Jazeera has also been targeted prior to the Iraq War. During the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, Al Jazeera's Kabul offices were destroyed by a U.S. missile. In a report by the BBC's Nik Gowing (4/8/02), Rear Admiral Craig Quigley, the U.S. deputy assistant defense secretary for public affairs, claimed that the compound was being used by Al Qaeda — a charge the news outlet strongly denied — and that this made it a “legitimate target.” The U.S.'s evidence? Al Jazeera's use of a satellite uplink and its regular contacts with Taliban officials —perfectly normal activities for a news outlet.
Quigley also made the improbable claim that the U.S. had not known the compound was Al Jazeera's office, and asserted that in any case, such information was “not relevant” to the decision to destroy it. “The U.S. military,” concluded Gowing, “makes no effort to distinguish between legitimate satellite uplinks for broadcast news communications and the
identifiable radio or satellite communications belonging to ‘the enemy.’”
Whether the U.S. is deliberately targeting independent media, or is simply not taking care to avoid attacking obvious media targets, the failure to respect the protection afforded journalists under the Geneva Conventions is deeply troubling. Unfettered reporting from the battlefield is essential to bear witness to the realities of war.
[Notre recommandation est que ce texte doit être lu avec la mention classique à l'esprit, — “Disclaimer: In accordance with 17 U.S.C. 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only.”.]
By Erich Marquardt , April 09, 2003, YellowTimes.org (NewsFromtheFront.org)
Further information on the recent deaths of journalists killed by U.S. forces in Baghdad Tuesday has caused concern amongst major media outlets in addition to media watchdog groups.
As News From the Front (NFTF) reported yesterday, journalists reporting from Al Jazeera and Abu Dhabi TV had their offices bombed during a U.S. air strike over Baghdad. A U.S. tank also fired on journalists in the Palestine Hotel within hours of the first attacks. In both cases, the U.S. military expressed their regret for the losses, claiming they did not intentionally target the journalists and media organizations.
Yet Majed Abdel Hadi, a Baghdad correspondent for Al Jazeera, accused the U.S. of ''deliberately'' targeting Al Jazeera's offices. Hadi reiterated the fact that the U.S. also landed ''four missiles'' at Al Jazeera's Kabul office -- just ten minutes after its correspondents were warned about an upcoming attack -- during the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan.
CNN Correspondent Rym Brahimi has stated that both the Al Jazeera and Abu Dhabi TV buildings were visibly marked; the names of the networks were printed in large letters on sheets attached to the building. Furthermore, Al Jazeera's chief editor, Abrahim Hilal, told the media that the U.S. military was informed of the exact location of Al Jazeera's Baghdad offices, including the street number, map and GPS coordinates.
According to Al Jazeera correspondent Tayseer Allouni, at the time of the attack well-known Al Jazeera journalist Tareq Ayoub and cameraman Zuheir Iraqi were both standing on the roof of their Baghdad bureau preparing for a live broadcast when two missiles struck the building, killing Ayoub and injuring Iraqi. Allouni further elaborated that shortly after this strike, U.S. warplanes returned to hit the neighboring offices of Abu Dhabi TV.
Ayoub worked as a producer for Fox News Channel in 1998 and as a freelance producer for CNN in February before returning to work with Al Jazeera.
During the same morning, U.S. forces unleashed tank fire on the Palestine Hotel, arguing that they were being fired on by Iraqi snipers inside or on the roof of the hotel. Yet the hotel is well known as the base for some 200 journalists from all over the world. Furthermore, the firing tank was about a mile and a half from the hotel at the time; the greatest distance sniper fire can usually travel is about 2500 feet, while the range of rocket propelled grenades (RPGs) is considerably less.
These events have sparked outrage among the international media, demanding answers for the series of attacks on journalists operating in the field. Media organizations have been accusing the U.S. administration of hypocrisy. While the Bush administration is claiming that Iraqis will be prosecuted for violations of the Geneva Conventions, the Committee to Protect Journalists warned that the administration's own actions violate Article 79 of the Geneva Conventions concerning the safety of journalists.
Reporters Without Borders has also demanded that the U.S. prove they fired on the Palestine Hotel in self-defense. Robert Manard, secretary-general of Reporters Without Borders, was quoted by CNN as saying: ''We are appalled at what happened because it was known that both places contained journalists. We are concerned at the U.S. Army's increasingly hostile attitude towards journalists, especially those non-embedded in its military units.''
The organization also claims that the surrounding neighborhood around the Palestine Hotel was very quiet at the time, as shown through French TV station footage. They further stated, ''[The] U.S. tank crew took their time, waiting for a couple of minutes and adjusting its gun before opening fire.'' BBC correspondent Rageh Omaar, and a variety of other journalists in the hotel at the time, said that there was no gunfire coming out of the hotel prior to it being attacked by U.S. forces.
In a Fox News article, the Editor in Chief of Reuters, Geert Linnebank, who lost a correspondent due to U.S. fire on the Palestine Hotel, warned, ''…the incident nonetheless raises questions about the judgment of the advancing U.S. troops who have known all along that this hotel is the main base for almost all foreign journalists in Baghdad.''
[Notre recommandation est que ce texte doit être lu avec la mention classique à l'esprit, — “Disclaimer: In accordance with 17 U.S.C. 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only.”.]
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