Today an anti-terror rally is being held in Paris in memory of those killed at the offices of Charlie Hebdo (posts passim) and at a Kosher supermarket in recent days.
It is said that up to 1.5 mn. people are attending the rally.
Amongst the attendees are many politicians, led by President Hollande. Many foreign politicians are also attending.
Charlie Hebdo was a beacon of free speech and freedom of the press. Several of the foreign politicians in attendance represent regimes whose treatment of the press is less than enlightened. They include:
- King Abdullah of Jordan, which last year sentenced a Palestinian journalist to 15 years in prison with hard labour;
- Turkey’s Prime Minister Mr Davutoglu. Turkey imprisons more journalists than any other state;
- Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel, whose armed forces killed 7 journalists in Gaza in 2014;
- Egypt’s Prime Minister Mr Shoukry. Egypt has not just jailed Al Jazeera journalists (now facing a retrail), but has also detained photojournalist Shawkan for more than 500 days;
- Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov of Russia, which last year jailed a journalist for “insulting a government servant“;
- Foreign Minister Ramtane Lamamra of Algeria, which has so far detained journalist Abdessami Abdelhai for 15 months without charge;
- Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, Foreign Minister of the United Arab Emirates, which in 2013 held an Egyptian journalist incommunicado for a month on suspicion of links with the Moslem Brotherhood;
- Prime Minister Jomaa of Tunisia, which recently jailed blogger Yassine Ayan for 3 years for “defaming the army“;
- Messrs Irakli Garibashvili and Boiko Borisov, the Prime Ministers of Georgia and Bulgaria respectively. Both Bulgaria and Georgia have past form for attacking and beating up journalists;
- Eric H. Holder, the Attorney General of the United States. Police in Ferguson have recently detained and assaulted Washington Post reporters;
- Prime Minister Samaras of Greece, where riot police regularly beat up journalists at demonstrations, including injuring two journalists at a protest in June 2014;
- Jens Stoltenberg, the Secretary General of NATO, an organisation yet to be held to account for deliberately bombing and killing 16 Serbian journalists in 1999;
- President Keita of Mali, where journalists are expelled for covering human rights abuses;
- Sheikh Khalid bin Ahmed bin Mohammed Al Khalifah, the Foreign Minister of Bahrain, which is the world’s 2nd largest jailer of journalists in per capita terms;
- Sheikh Mohamed Ben Hamad Ben Khalifa Al Thani of Qatar, which jailed a man for 15 years for writing a poem;
- Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, who had several journalists jailed for insulting him in 2013;
- Prime Minister Cerar of Slovenia, which sentenced a blogger to six months’ imprisonment in 2013 for “defamation“;
- Prime Minister Enda Kenny of Ireland, where “blasphemy” is still a criminal offence;
- Prime Minister Kopacz of Poland, which raided a magazine’s offices to seize recordings that might embarrass the ruling party;
- UK Prime Minister Cameron, whose security agencies forced The Guardian to destroy hard drives containing documents it had obtained from US whistle-blower Graham Snowden threatened the paper with prosecution if it continued to report Snowden’s revelations.
Hat tip: Daniel Wickham.