Al Jazeera Media Network published a statement on behalf of its journalists and families calling on all supporters of the free press in the world to take a firm stand to protect journalists, stressing that they take the recent threats to bomb the headquarters of the island in Doha seriously.
According to the announcement, published in the Guardian, the increasing threats against the network and its journalists in recent times are cause for concern, given the record of those instigators and threatened. The text of the Declaration reads as follows.
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For those who support the free press
Dear reader,
In Gabriel García Marquez's stunning story "The Announced Death Story", the Vicario brothers spend the whole night wandering around their town and telling all who meet him of their intention to kill Santiago Nassar, who say he has threatened the honor of their families. But none of the townspeople came forward to suppress these two brothers, and by the next day, this heinous act was completed.
We are writing today as senior journalists on Al Jazeera Media, an independent international news organization. We are writing to alert you to a similar tragedy: we have become a real threat of death. Unfortunately, this is not the first time.
Last week, a high-ranking Saudi journalist with close ties to Saudi Arabia's top decision-makers used his Twitter account to call for an air raid on the island's headquarters by the Saudi-UAE alliance, which for more than four years has been haunting thousands of Yemenis.
The former director of Al-Arabiya channel Khaled Al-Matrafi said through his Twitter account that Al-Jazeera's main headquarters in Doha was "a legitimate and logical target" for the alliance that is bombing Yemen. Arabic is a media network run by Saudi Arabia officially.
Two years ago, Abdulrahman Al-Rashed, director general of Al Arabiya, warned that if Qatar did not "flag the white flag" of the blockade imposed by Saudi Arabia, the island's employees would be slaughtered like the thousand Egyptian protesters killed in a fourth square in Cairo in 2013.
WikiLeaks documents revealed in 2011 that Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed had urged the United States to bomb the headquarters of the island during the US invasion of Afghanistan, and called on the United States later to "restrain the island."
This pattern of behavior is very disturbing.
If the Saudi authorities had said on Twitter that they would kill and cut off the defiant Saudi journalist and columnist in the Washington Post Jamal Khashoggi, the threat would have seemed futile, and few would take it seriously.
We are now aware of the extent to which Saudi policymakers want to silence the independent press.
It should also be noted that Governments throughout the world have failed to impose any consequences on those who ordered the killing and mutilation of Mr. Khashoggi. So the suggestion that civilized international standards would restrain Saudi Arabia and its coalition partners from a dramatic escalation of its war on the press attacking the island does not reassure us.
The island's men and women are one of the most diverse newsrooms of different nationalities (nearly 94 nationalities), producing high-quality content on more than 20 platforms. We and our families have chosen to work on Al Jazeera because it enables us to deliver quality journalism day after day.
The price of our commitment to the island and its press has steadily increased over the years. We have seen our colleagues in the field being imprisoned, tortured and killed by regimes and forces hostile to the independent scrutiny indispensable to any democratic society.
We have seen air strikes hitting our offices in Kabul, Baghdad and Gaza. We have seen systems of fear of truth closing our operations in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Yemen and Sudan.
If our headquarters has long been a refuge from the dangers of the front-line press, this has been changing since the blockade imposed by the Saudi-UAE bloc on Qatar in the hope of forcing Qatar to comply with its foreign policies and close the island.
The blockade and the accompanying threats - including the planned invasion of Qatar, which US officials are supposed to have prevented - have inflicted tremendous psychological losses on us, who are working here and our families.
Now, threats of violence are increasing, and the horrific record of those who incite violence against the island's staff forces us to take these threats seriously.
So far we appeal to you, from the headquarters of a network targeted by the same forces that killed Mr. Khashoggi, to take a stand and demand an end to violence against journalists.
The threat to one of us is a threat to all of us.
Sincerely,
Journalists of Al Jazeera Media Network and their families.
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