Collected by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), 15 media directors and editors from 14 countries and the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Dmitri Mouratov, called on Tuesday for the release of Algerian journalist Ihsane El Kadi and an end to the obstacles against the media he directs.
“Freedom for Ihsane El Kadi, freedom for Radio M and Maghreb Emergent, freedom for Algerian journalists. This is the message launched in the international press by 16 media and editorial leaders, who denounce an “intolerable attack on press freedom in Algeria”.
They describe the imprisonment of Ihsane El Kadi, director of Radio M and Maghreb Émergent, on “manifestly aberrant” grounds, as an “intolerable attack” on press freedom in Algeria.
The imprisonment of the Algerian journalist “seriously undermines the right to information, which is a right of all citizens, a condition of freedom of opinion and expression and of democracy”, underline the signatories of the appeal posted on the RSF website.
“The arrest on the night of December 24 of Ihsane El Kadi, presented with handcuffs – quite a symbol of the criminalization of the press –, and the sealing of the Radio M and Maghreb Émergent media by the Algerian authorities are inadmissible”, they point out.
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How can entire teams be prevented from exercising their social function which is so useful to societies? they wonder, recalling that Algeria was already ranked 134th out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2022 World Press Freedom Index.
They call on Algeria to show its “attachment to law and democratic values and not to switch to systematic repression”.
“We call on all media professionals in the world to join us in stopping and rolling back this wave of repression that is sweeping the press in Algeria,” the press bosses said.
Alongside Reporters Without Borders (RSF), they call on the Algerian authorities to release Ihsane El Kadi without delay, to drop all the charges against him, and to return their working tools to Radio M and Maghreb Émergent. , so that the feathers and the voices can resume their activity.
The appeal, coordinated by RSF, comes a few days before the examination of the appeal brought against the order of his placement in detention, on January 18.
The list of signatories includes, in addition to the editor-in-chief of the Novaya Gazeta newspaper and 2021 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Dmitry Muratov (Russia), media executives from Tunisia, France, Poland, the United Kingdom, Norway, from Ukraine, Italy, Benin, Spain, Slovakia, Senegal, Finland, and Gabon, as well as other major media figures from eight other countries around the world.
“The scale of international indignation is commensurate with the serious attack on freedom of the press represented by the imprisonment of Ihsane El Kadi. The wave of repression of which he is the latest victim demonstrates the authorities’ desire to silence the country’s independent media. The Algerian authorities must heed this appeal launched by the leaders of the world’s major media, underlines Christophe Deloire, Secretary General of RSF.
Victim of real judicial harassment, Ihsane El Kadi is accused of having received funding from abroad and was placed in police custody on December 24, 2022, before being remanded in custody by the investigating judge. from the Sidi M’Hamed court and imprisoned in El Harrach prison in Algiers on 29 December. On December 25, the media he runs, Radio M and Maghreb Émergent, were raided and sealed.
With MAP