In multiple incidents, journalists covering Egypt's unrest were pummeled, hit with pepper spray, shouted at and
threatened by loyalists to President Hosni Mubarak asthe scene at
anti-government demonstrations suddenly turned ugly.
"For the first time in the last few days, we can feel what
dictatorship really means," said Lara Logan of CBS News, who said
she was effectively trapped in an Alexandria hotel.
When a CBS camera crew attempted to take pictures of violece
between pro- and anti-government crowds, they were marched back to
their hotel at gunpoint, Logan said. The CBS journalists were only
allowed to leave without cameras, and were watched wherever they
went. Mubarak's opponents were becoming afraid to talk to
journalists, she said.
Several reporters told similar stories of what the Committee to
Protect Journalists described as a series of deliberate attacks. The
New York-based CPJ called on the Egyptian military to provide
protection for reporters.
Veteran international correspondent Christiane Amanpour, now
working for ABC News, said she witnessed Mubarak supporters arriving
at Cairo's Tahrir Square in what appeared to be coordinated fashion
in the early afternoon and sensed the mood changing.
"The thing about this is you can smell it," she said. "I just
wondered what this was going to bode for the day."
She soon found out. She was trying to interview a Mubarak
supporter when she was surrounded by several young men shouting that
"we hate Americans" and "go to hell."
When it was clear the situation wouldn't improve, Amanpour and
her ABC colleagues got in a car to leave. The car was surrounded by
men banging on the sides and windows, and a rock was thrown through
the windshield, shattering glass on the occupants. They escaped
without injury.
Blaming the press when things are going bad is a "time-honored
and sad tradition," she said.
CNN's Anderson Cooper said he, a producer and camera operator
were set upon by people who began punching them and trying to break
their camera. Another CNN reporter, Hala Gorani, said she was shoved
against a fence when demonstrators rode in on horses and camels, and
feared she was going to get trampled.
"This is incredibly fast-moving," Cooper said. "I've been in
mobs before and I've been in riots, but I've never had it turn so
quickly."
A journalist for Dubai-based Al-Arabiya television suffered a
concussion, said media watchdog International Press Institute,
citing Randa Abul-Azm, the station's bureau chief in Cairo.
The attacks appeared to reflect a pro-government view that many
media outlets are sympathetic to protesters who want Mubarak to quit
now rather than complete his term. On Tuesday night, Mubarak pledged
not to run in elections later this year, and the army urged people
to cease demonstrating.
In Wednesday's fighting, security forces did not intervene as
thousands of people hurled stones and firebombs at each other for
hours in and around the capital's Tahrir Square.
Fox Business Channel's Ashley Webster reported that security
officials burst into a room where he and a camera operator where
observing the demonstration from a balcony. They forced the camera
inside the room. He called the situation "very unnerving" and said
via Twitter that he was trying to lay low.
CBS newsman Mark Strassman said he and a camera operator were
attacked as they attempted to get close to the rock-throwing and
take pictures. The camera operator, who he would not name, was
punched repeatedly and hit in the face with Mace.
"As soon as one started, it was like blood in the water," he
said. The two men were caught up in a crowd they soon learned were
anti-Mubarak demonstrators who were trying to whisk them to safety.
The demonstrators told them to get away for safety's sake, and they
complied.
"It's a significant news story but at the same time you have to
protect yourself," he said. "You're not doing anybody any good if
you end up in a hospital or worse."
Strassman also felt that it also made him and his colleague
vulnerable because they were clearly identifiable as Westerners.
Al-Jazeera, the Arab news network that has been the most consistent
target of the Mubarak regime's wrath, escaped trouble on Wednesday.
Al Jazeera kept its camera crews away from the square and instead
relied on reporters of Arab descent who had flip cameras and tried
to do their work by blending in with the crowd, said Al Anstey, the
network's managing director.
"It's a very, very challenging situation," Anstey said. "But
it's history in the making."
There were reported assaults on journalists for the BBC, Danish
TV2 News and Swiss television. Two Associated Press correspondents
were also roughed up.
"We strongly condemn these attacks and urge all parties to
refrain from violence against journalists, local or foreign, who are
simply trying to cover these demonstrations and clashes for the
benefit of the public," Anthony Mills, press freedom manager for
Vienna-based IPI, said in a statement.
"We are particularly concerned at suggestions that the attacks
may have been linked to the security services," he said.
Government spokesman Magdy Rady said the assertion of state
involvement in street clashes and attacks on reporters was a
"fiction," and that the government welcomed objective coverage.
"It would help our purpose to have it as transparent as
possible. We need your help," Rady said in an interview with The
Associated Press. However, he said some media were not impartial and
were "taking sides against Egypt."
The website of Belgium's Le Soir newspaper said Belgian reporter
Serge Dumont, whose real name is Maurice Sarfatti, was beaten
Wednesday while covering a pro-Mubarak demonstration and taken away
by unidentified people dressed as civilians. The paper said Sarfatti
had been able to call the paper to tell them he had been taken to a
military post.
"They are saying I'm going to be taken to see security services.
They accuse me of being a spy," the paper's website quoted him as
saying.
A reporter for Turkey's Fox TV, his Egyptian cameraman and their
driver were abducted by men with knives while filming protests
Wednesday, but Egyptian police later rescued them, said Anatolia, a
Turkish news agency.
There was no information on why the crew was held or
circumstances surrounding their release.
A correspondent and a cameraman working for Russia's Zvezda
television channel were detained by men in plainclothes and held
overnight Tuesday, Anastasiya Popova of Vesti state television and
radio said on air from Cairo.
"All of their equipment, cameras and all cassettes, were taken
from them, they were taken to a house and blindfolded," Popova
said. They were questioned, she said, "but today they took them to
the outskirts of town and let them go without any explanation."
Reporter Jean-Francois Lepine of Canada's CBC all-French RDI
network said that he and a cameraman were surrounded by a mob that
began hitting them, until they were rescued by the Egyptian army.
"Without them, we probably would have been beaten to death," he
said.
