For example, the United Nations announced there were 456 deaths from violence in the month of March. AFP, which wrongly reported 271 deaths, felt a Tweet counted as a correction. 271 is a gross undercounting and AFP should be ashamed. Yet, as the week was winding down they were again repeating their clearly false number.
Because they have no shame and clearly no pride in their work.
With no sense of awareness or irony, the head of AFP's Baghdad division, Prashant Rao Tweeted this morning:
Prashant Rao
Being told Iraq to have public holidays
from Tuesday to April 20, ahead of elections. No sweat, not like any of
us wanted to get work done.
No, Prashant, you don't want to do any work. You want to take what Nouri says and present it as fact. You want to appease the tyrant.
For over 100 days, over 10% of Iraq's population has taken part in protests. Below are protesters in Falluja.
AFP's reported from the protests how many times, Prashant?
It's okay, you can use your right hand to count. It's not like you need your right and your left hand to count. The protests started in December and AFP has largerly ignored them except for the occasional sweeping generalization.
The reporting AFP is too lazy to do is instead done by Iraqi Spring MC -- here for Facebook, here for Twitter, here for Flickr.
Just like AFP and other outlets have gone out of their way to note what sparked the protests: women and girls being tortured and raped in Iraqi prisons and detention centers.
What reporters like Prashant Rao wouldn't tell, Iraqis could, columnists too, even Amnesty International -- see their report entitled [PDF format warning] "Iraq: A Decade of Abuses."
Dr. Souad Al-Azzawi (URUKNET) explained is was being covered on TV -- Iraqi TV:
Al
Maliki, occupation appointed Prime Minister of Iraq, appeared on
Saturday, Feb. 2, 2013 on Arabia TV channel. The dialogue evolved around
the protests of millions of Iraqis which have lasted more than 40 days.
In this interview, Al Maliki emphasized that his government (occupation
assigned) will not meet the demonstrators demands. He kept eluding and
twisting facts about the humanitarian and justified demands the
protesters. Nothing is unexpected in what he said or claimed because we
all know in Iraq that he is an occupation puppet and would only serve
American and Iranian occupation interests in Iraq.
What was disturbing and caught my attention was Maliki’s comments on the
detention and torture of women in Iraqi prisons. He claimed that under
law, a woman can be detained if she covers up the crimes of her husband.
With this statement, Maliki claimed he had the answer to the angry
protests all over Iraq calling for the release of all innocent women.
Mothers, sisters, daughters and wives have been unjustly detained,
tortured or raped, simply because they do not know the whereabouts of
the men in their families. Thousands of women have been detained with no
legal accusations. Some of them are imprisoned with their infants and
children in unbearable prison conditions [1] just because Maliki claims that their husbands, brothers, or fathers have committed an act of terror.Haifa Zangana (Guardian) wrote about the state of Iraqi women:
The plight of women detainees was the starting point for the mass protests that have spread through many Iraqi provinces since 25 December 2012. Their treatment by the security forces has been a bleeding wound – and one shrouded in secrecy, especially since 2003. Women have been routinely detained as hostages – a tactic to force their male loved ones to surrender to security forces, or confess to crimes ascribed to them. Banners and placards carried by hundreds of thousands of protesters portray images of women behind bars pleading for justice.
[. . .]
No wonder, ten years after the invasion, the Iraqi authorities are accused by US-based Human Rights Watch of "violating with impunity the rights of Iraq's most vulnerable citizens, especially women and detainees". HRW's account is echoed by a report by the Iraqi parliament's own human rights and women, family and children's committees, which found that there are 1,030 women detainees suffering from widespread abuse, including threats of rape.
Responding to these findings, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki threatened to "arrest those members of parliament who had discussed the violence against women detainees".
When did AFP report on any of this?
Answer: They didn't.
And, to our French readers, we urge you to share that throughout your country. That AFP is covering up for rapes. That AFP doesn't think rape is worthy of reporting. Let's make sure everyone knows just what pigs AFP has sent to Baghdad.
Repeatedly, they ignore the most important details or report them a day after others have.
If you're not getting how lazy they are, Saturday night after 7:00 pm PST, C.I. posted an entry which opened:
April 20th, 12 of Iraq's 18 provinces are scheduled to hold provincial elections. Today? Special voting for the security forces. While they voted, All Iraq News reports, provincial candidate Hatam al-Dulaimi, with the Justice Party, was shot dead in Tirkit.
Prashant covered it too . . . He Tweeted about it on Sunday at 6:00 am PST.
Iraqi Kurdish president's re-election plans spark criticism - @AFP in Sulaimaniyah: http://bit.ly/XKIQIM
AFP has become the police in a Tracy Chapman song, AFP "always comes late, if they come at all" ("Behind The Walls," first appears on Tracy Chapman's self-titled debut album).
