By Lucinda Holt and Quint Brantley
A picture of a smiling, young Iraqi man flashes on the computer screen. Dressed in a suit, his clean-cut appearance is underlined by his name.
All pictures taken in 2008 by Sgt. Charles J. Holt during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Journalist Amir Yehia is calling on Skype. He said he currently stays busy as he travels between Missouri and the Middle Eastern cities of Doha and Abu Dhabi.
“Hello,”a friendly voice chimes in, as the call is answered. Yehia is prepared to answer questions, but he begins with small-talk in a happy tone.
Yehia was a journalist in a place and a time when journalism was admired, yet heavily penalized – Baghdad, Iraq, during the U.S. military’s Operation Iraqi Freedom.
He said he fled to America in fear for his life. When he occasionally travels to his homeland to visit his family, he said he stays shut in for the duration of his visit, because his life is still in danger.
“I was threatened many times, finally I decided to leave Iraq,”Yehia said about moving to America in 2006.
His brother, he said, is currently a reporter in Iraq. In a recent attack, he said the Iraqi government raided his brother’s office and kidnapped several journalists. He said his brother immediately fled to Turkey.
“Being a journalist in Iraq, everyone wants to kill you,” Yehia said as his voice began to change as the happy tone quickly disappeared while he described the struggles of his native land.
“As a journalist,” he said, “I have to be voice to the voiceless because I lost a lot of people I know, and I know who killed them.”
“The Global Journalist in the 21st Century,” written by David Weaver and Lars Willnat, shows a study conducted by the Committee to Protect Journalists in 2009 found in that year alone, 14 journalists were killed.
Since 2003 Yehia said, an estimated 265 journalists have been killed and that does not include other media staff.
Freedom House, an American organization for global freedom, labels Iraq as not free due to a lack of freedom in the press — a cause of political interference among many other things.
This was a common sign found on most American tanks and trucks.
Yehia said the best way to describe their situation is with a joke.
The joke he told, was of militants threatening to kill a journalist and his friends because he dreamed they wrote an investigative piece highlighting the corruption within the government.
“I always actually advise the journalists here in America,”he said. “A lot of them are very honest. They want to cover the truth, but if you are younger than 25-years-old, don’t go and cover wars.”
He said he doesn’t advise American reporters to cover this area because the imagery will haunt them.
“What you see,”Yehia said, “it will hau — sooner or later it will affect you.”
He spoke of his own personal conflicts in the aftermath of reporting in a war fought on his native soil.
The most corrupt era in government, he said, began in 2003 under Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki.
Corruption, lies, imprisonment, and death are just a few words used to describe the government under Al-Maliki.
“A lot of journalists, as I said, they lost their lives, they lost their dignity, the government sent them to the jail,”an audibly upset Yehia said.
Just a few months ago, he said, the Iraqi government ceased operations on more than 10 television channels without any documentation or reason.
The Freedom House website reveals that freedom of speech is protected under the Iraqi constitution.
The website also shows the government is able to get around that through libel and defamation claims under penal code 1969 which prohibits journalists from publishing anything in that manner.
Most of the time, Yehia said, the individuals inflicting attacks on journalists are dressed in regular clothing, but everyone knows who sent them.
Kirkuk is a Christian village in Iraq, located about four hours north of Baghdad.
A glimpse of hope emerges as “The Global Journalist in the 21st Century“ reveals a change in Iraqi media inspired by news organization Al-Jazeera.
The book indicates that because of Al-Jazeera, a product of Qatar, citizens are reuniting and promoting a pan-Arab identity.
As new cases involving violence against Iraqi journalists make their way to our current news headlines, Yehia said he worries about the lack of ethics.
“Most of the journalists,”he said, “they have a lack of ethics because tof heir background. Most of them, they’ve never been in journalism school.
They need training, they need workshops, they need to go out for example, two months or one month, to any country outside of Iraq, just to see how the system works.”
This article was contributed by Lea Hellmueller’s JOUR 4301: Future of Global Journalism class.
Editor’s note: Charles J. Holt, who took the pictures in this story, is married to author Lucinda Holt.
About Lucinda Holt
