INDEPENDENT MEDIA CENTRE KURDISTAN

IMCK director Judit Neurink participated on March 24 in Amman in the Iraq Donor Conference, organised by the Danish organisation International Media Support. Different donors for media and media-organisations discussed the present situation in Iraq and the consequences for the media, the needs of media and ways for the organisations to coordinate and cooperate. Other representatives in the meeting, apart those from IMCK and IMS, were from Open Society Institute, Unesco, the Swedish embassy in Baghdad, Internews, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Press Now and Irex.

In Erbil, at the facilities of Agef, IMCK trainers Khidher Domle and Judit Neurink worked with a group of mediapeople from Kurdish ministries on how to get their information to the media. The workshop of one morning took place on February 3 as part of a series of training for spokesmen by Agef. Domle and Neurink informed the group how journalists work, what they will do to get information and how they can best be informed. They stressed that a good relationship between media offices of the government and the press is essential to provide the Kurdish people with the information that they should have.

Speech by Judit Neurink, director of IMCK, after the death of Lveen-journalist Soran Mama Hama, in July 2008 Monday my good friend Yahya Basindji of Avene and AP was wounded when he was beaten up by a mob after a bombblast in Kirkuk. Last week my former student Soran Mama Hama of Lveen was assasinated in Kirkuk. Being a journalist in Iraq is a dangerous profession, we all know. And that is because so many people do not realize how important press freedom is for a nation. Without press freedom, no democracy. Those two are linked tightly. Because in a democracy, the media check on politicians and their actions, give civilians a voice and show what is happening in society. How long will we have to wait until Iraq is a democracy, and authorities will understand that they have to protect journalists, in stead of threatening them? That by letting these things happen, they do not show strength, but weakness, even fear? Fear for a press that is doing what it should be doing… Look at the murder...

The Independent Media Centre in Kurdistan was founded in May 2008 and is supported by the Dutch ngo’s Press Now and Democracy and Media. Funding is both Dutch, international and Kurdish. Its main office is in Sulaymaniya, but the centre also has offices in Duhok and Irbil. Press Now started training civil journalism in Iraqi Kurdistan in 2004, and has since trained a few hundred journalists from different media (radio, TV, print). The Media Centre will extend the work started by Press Now, giving equal time and energy to journalists from different backgrounds - political, social, religious and ethnic.