The Iraqi government extended its ban on Al-Jazeera television and closed the Baghdad office of the Qatar-based satellite news channel Sept. 4, claiming that it has not complied with the arrangements of a previous temporary ban. The original ban, scheduled to be lifted Sept. 7, was reinforced just prior to Iraqi security officers’ reported raid of the channel’s Baghdad offices.
On Aug. 5, Iraqi interim government officials ordered Al-Jazeera to close its offices for one month on charges of advocating violence and inciting hatred and racial tension. A spokesman from Al-Jazeera said the ban stated the network should refrain from covering “official activities” of the Governing Council for the duration of two weeks.
According to CNN, the ban came with claims that Al-Jazeera had promoted political violence, including advocating killing members of the Iraqi Governing Council and the U.S.-led coalition, and has aired video of “terrorists terrorizing Iraqis.”
Al-Jazeera (which translates as “The Island” in Arabic) was founded in November 1996, and is the first 24-hour news channel in the Arab world. It did not, however, gain fame in the United States until its controversial coverage of the events of Sept. 11, 2001.
Members of many Western governments and media sources, including The Wall Street Journal, have condemned Al-Jazeera as “the mouthpiece of Osama bin Laden” for broadcasting the statements of bin Laden and other members of Al Qaeda.
One Arab viewer expressed fear that the ban was due to U.S. influence. “We had become addicted to Al-Jazeera,” the anonymous viewer told the Arab newspaper The Peninsula. “I think the Iraqi government has placed the ban under pressure from the U.S.”
In its struggles, Al-Jazeera has found sympathizers in the International Foundation of Journalists (IFJ), the world’s largest journalists’ group. The IFJ has called for the interim Iraqi government to lift the ban on Al-Jazeera.
The IFJ has also condemned Canadian broadcasting regulators for exercising prior review over material broadcast on Al-Jazeera in Canada.
“This is an unacceptable and unprecedented intrusion that compromises the rights of Arab speakers in Canada,” Aidan White, general secretary of the IFJ, told The Peninsula. “Cable companies will not take any channel if regulators impose bizarre and confused restrictions.”
Despite the ban and restrictions, polls show that many are still watching Al-Jazeera broadcasts and visiting its Web site, Aljazeera.net, which is also available in English.
Robert Menard of Reporters Without Borders, a group that works to extend freedom of the press worldwide, told The Guardian that the ban is in conflict with “Iraqi officials’ statements on democracy.”
At least one Western viewer agrees.
“The ban on Al-Jazeera is pointless,” viewer Julie Turner said on MSN’s online message board. “Its inside access inside Iraq has been valuable toward Americans gaining a broader perspective of the war. If we claim to want freedom and democracy in the Arab world, we can’t cry wolf when they develop a free press.