September 27, 2003	Saturday	Rajab 29, 1424

PARIS, Sept 26: Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF), the international journalists’ rights organization, has “strongly condemned” the Iraqi Governing Council’s two-week ban on Arab TV stations Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya for allegedly encouraging political violence and the murder of Council members and US and British troops.

“This is a clear and blatant attack on press freedom,” said RSF’s secretary-general Robert Menard, who noted that “when media such as these broadcast calls by terrorist groups or extremist political parties for armed violence, they are not themselves guilty of incitement to violence.

“Rather, they are doing their job of informing the public and dealing journalistically with the important subject of terrorism, a phenomenon they have not themselves created,” said the secretary-general..