CAIRO - In order to protect herself from being attacked while covering the demonstrations in Al Tahrir Square in central Cairo, foreign photographer Moneick Jack thought of wearing a headscarf to hide her European features. “Covering my head to avoid being attacked by the police didn't work. We were afraid, but we had to be in the field because that's our work,” said Moneick, who works for a foreign newspaper in Egypt and was responsible for live coverage of the demonstrations. The coverage was the hardest ever in Egypt. Many Egyptians were very worried and thought that they had to defend their countries from foreign journalists, whom some considered to be spies, bent on destabilising the country. “I was stopped by a policeman in the street. When I showed him my ID and he realised I was a journalist, he shouted in my face,” Moneick angrily told the Egyptian Mail. She isn't the only one: many foreign photographers and journalists, as well as Egyptian ones, were brutally attacked by the pro-regime police in the streets of Egypt's capital. In a similar incident, the Turkish Television office in Cairo said in a statement that the correspondent for the Turkish News Network, Matin Turan, had been brutally attacked while covering the protests in Al Tahrir. The statement added that the Turkish correspondent was also robbed and his equipment was smashed, but he was able to flee from his aggressors and sought sanctuary in the Turkish Embassy. Meanwhile, one Egyptian journalist was shot dead by a sniper while taking photos of the demonstration from his window of his home near Al Tahrir. Ahmed Mohamed Mahmoud, who worked for Al-Ta'awan newspaper, lay in a coma for four days in Qasr Al-Aini Hospital, having been shot in the eye, before he died. Abeer Saady, a journalist and a member of the Egyptian Press Syndicate, blamed the pro-regime Egyptian Television for making Egyptian viewers hate anti-regime journalists, whether Egyptians or foreigners. The Egyptian Press Syndicate, as an independent entity and mouthpiece for Egyptian journalists, has, in co-operation with the International Federation for Journalism (IFJ), launched a number of hotlines for complaints from journalists. Their numbers include 0032 2235 2200 in Brussels and two numbers in Cairo: 0020 1277 99028 and 0020 1029 77519. The IFJ recently sent the Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq a letter asking him to act rapidly on the complaints of journalists. “The hotlines are for complaints from foreign journalists and correspondents, who have been attacked while covering the demonstrations, whether in Cairo or other cities like Alexandria, Suez, Ismailia and Qena,” added Saady, calling all journalists to push for the rights of innocent colleagues who have been brutalised by the pro-regime police and thugs. “We are going to document all these attacks, to help these journalists get their rights,” she added, noting that the attacks were organised, not haphazard. “Some foreign correspondents were attacked in their homes and their cameras smashed to prevent them from airing any news stories that may be anti-regime or anti-Mubarak,” she told this newspaper. Saady said that the Egyptian Press Syndicate got journalists to volunteer to make reports in different languages from the heart of the demonstration, to be prepared for foreign journalists, to help them file their own reports. "Journalists should be able to work in a very safe environment in any country. This is one of their simple rights. They should be able to have their say with transparency and without any barriers. “Citizen journalists', who write on social networking sites like Facebook, should also enjoy freedom of expression,” Saady stressed, denouncing the recent arrest of Wael Ghoneim, the marketing manager of Google and the administrator of the ‘We Are All Khaled Saeed' page on Facebook. Ghoneim spent 12 days in a State Security prison for spreading his anti-regime opinions among his friends via Facebook. “We as Egyptian journalists are struggling against anyone illegally trying to suppress justice and freedom of opinion,” she added.
