Coming To USA: Journalists Jailed For "Disobeying Police" [Picture]

Some regimes hate the press, for dedicated journalissts rip the veil from their inhumane atrocities: we forget that it was the horific pictures of police dogd chewing on civil rights protesters in the Sixties that resuulted in the Voting Rights Act and other groundbreaking Civil Rights law.  A picture is truly worth a thousand wordss.  Those pictures and words are fuel for political luprisings, something dictators and autocrats hate. 

As has happened in the past, the US has locked up journalists for various versions of “dissobeying the police” and will continue to do so, unoes citizens make their displeasure known and support freeedom of thge press.

 

The assault on freedom o the pres is not limited to Azerajan: Here are recent US examples:

Our democracy needs a robust press to hold our leaders accountable and cover the important issues facing our communities.

But press freedom is under attack today, with government authorities seizing journalists’ phone records, detaining reporters at border crossings and demanding that journalists reveal the identities of confidential sources.

This kind of harassment doesn’t just affect “professional” journalists. The Internet and new technologies have democratized media making, with more people taking up the tools of journalism. And after years of newsroom layoffs, many of the people who are most at risk are citizen journalists and indie reporters operating outside the mainstream press  SOURCE

fFerguson, MO has been a hotbed of illegal, anti-journalism activity.  As has been stated elsewhere: dictators hate  being exposed and the police killing, beating of local residents is no longer simply a local matter–it is an attocity which has been exposed to the world.,   . 

Open your eyes Amerika:  You are no longer “exeptional”; these days you are showing yoiurself as just another anti-freedom of speech Banana Republic, whose dictatorship apes places like Azerbajan: 

Freelance journalist Ahmed Mukhtar, a contributor to Index on Censorship magazine, was detained at 7pm Friday 18 September in Azerbaijan, according to Contact.az.

Mukhtar’s brother, Elnur, works with Berlin-based Meydan.TV. His detention is the latest in a string of arrests of family members of contributors to Meydan.tv

Ahmed Mukhtar Released

2015 September 18 ( Saturday )  19:31:34

Around 22:00 the reporter made contact, saying that he was detained by mistake and there are no problems.

Today, about 19.00 the freelance journalist Ahmed Mukhtar was detained by three persons in civilian clothes near the house of the journalist, the activist Arzu Abdullayeva told Turan. Location of Mukhtarov is unknown. Mukhtarov is the brother of the journalist Elnur Mukhtar, working with Meydan TV.

“Ahmed Mukhtar is an extremely talented and courageous Azerbaijani photojournalist, whom I’ve had the pleasure of collaborating with through the Art for Democracy campaign. He is one of very few left in the country willing to capture risky subject matter like human rights abuses. His detention comes just one day after the detention of another young journalist, Abbas Shirin, also known for his photography, including his coverage of the recent trials of human rights defenders Leyla and Arif Yunus and journalist Khadija Ismayilova. Now it seems that even photographing people the Azerbaijani authorities have previously targeted is enough to land someone in jail”, said Rebecca Vincent, coordinator of the Sport for Rights campaign and former advocacy director of Art for Democracy, a creative campaign that ceased operations in August 2014 when authorities arrested its coordinator, human rights defender Rasul Jafarov.

On Thursday 17 September, Meydan.tv contributor Shirin Abbasov was sentenced to 30 days in jail “for disobeying the police after nearly thirty hours in custody,” according to Meydan.tv.

The Sport for Rights Coalition condemned Azerbaijan’s moves against journalists and independent media.

SOURCE