Libya

December 21, 2011

Abdurrahim al-Keib
Prime Minister of Libya
C/o Embassy of Libya
2600 Virginia Ave NW
Suite 705
Washington D.C. 20037

Via facsimile: +1 202-944-9606

Your Excellency,

The Committee to Protect Journalists has been monitoring with growing concern the difficulties that many foreign journalists have been experiencing in obtaining a visa to your country.

Journalists die at high rates while covering protests in the Arab world and elsewhere. Photographers and freelancers appear vulnerable. Pakistan is again the deadliest nation. A CPJ special report

Stark regional differences are seen as jailings grow significantly in the Middle East and North Africa. Dozens of journalists are held without charge, many in secret prisons. A CPJ special report

Matthew VanDyke returned home last week from Libya, arriving at the Baltimore airport still dressed in combat fatigues. "I went there to support the revolution," VanDyke declared. "My family did not know that when I left. You don't tell your mother you're going off to fight a war."

What troubles us is that VanDyke told his mother that he was going to Libya to be a journalist. So when he was captured on March 13 near Brega, that's what she told us.

CPJ is proud to support the inaugural exhibition this weekend of the Bronx Documentary Center, featuring work by acclaimed photojournalist Tim Hetherington, who was killed in an explosion in Libya in April.

On August 4, CPJ wrote to NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen requesting information about the July 30 attacks on broadcast facilities in Libya in which NATO aircraft destroyed three broadcast dishes. As we noted in our letter, CPJ is concerned any time a media outlet faces a military attack. Such attacks can only be justified under international humanitarian law if the facility is being used for military purposes or to incite violence against the civilian population.

New York, August 24, 2011--The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes the news that U.S. journalist Matthew VanDyke escaped with several inmates from Abu Salim prison in Tripoli today. VanDyke's mother told CPJ that he called her with the news of his escape and that he is safe and in good spirits. He also told his mother that he had been kept in solitary confinement for much of his imprisonment. It was not clear whether the prison was now controlled by rebels.

About 35 international journalists remained holed up in Tripoli's Rixos Hotel today, unable to leave the location, according to news reports. New video from The Guardian, above, shows reporters and photojournalists inside the hotel. BBC correspondent Matthew Price said conditions "deteriorated massively" overnight as forces loyal to Muammar Qaddafi patrolled the corridors.

UPDATE: Journalists in the Rixos Hotel have been allowed to leave, according to news accounts. CNN's Matthew Chance said the journalists negotiated with armed guards to win their release. The journalists left this afternoon local time in cars provided by the International Committee of the Red Cross.