Entries for April 2007

As their presence in the blogosphere increases, female bloggers are facing increased threats. Women are targets of sexual harassment and other threats, which are often of a more explicit and malicious nature than those against men. Read the article in The Washington Post.

Amal Kadhum al-Mudaris, a well-known Iraqi broadcaster, was shot by gunmen in a passing car over the weekend. Mudaris, whose career in television and radio spans more than four decades, was badly wounded, but she was in stable condition April 29. Read the IHT article.

Cynthia Tucker of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, a former IWMF board member who now sits on the IWMF advisory council, has won a 2007 Pulitzer Prize for commentary. The jury cited her "courageous, clear-headed columns that evince a strong sense of morality and pervasive knowledge of the community." Read an article in The Washington Post.

Radio newscaster Iman Youssef Abdullah and her husband, Moayad Hamid, were found dead in Mosul after being kidnapped by gunmen. The couple, who were found in their car, had been shot several times and incinerated.
Earlier this month in Iraq, Khamael Muhsin, a famous television presenter during Saddam Hussein's rule, was killed, and Thaer Ahmed, assistant director of Baghdad TV, died when a car bomb struck the television offices. Read the IHT article.

An article by Eleanor Clift, co-chair of the IWMF board of directors, covers a conversation with Huda Ahmed, the IWMF's Elizabeth Neuffer Fellow. Ahmed, an Iraqi journalist, discusses the Iraqi people and the U.S. government. Read the article in Newsweek.

Hundreds of journalists and others have signed an open letter to ask that Alan Johnston, the BBC's Gaza correspondent, be freed quickly and unharmed. Johnston was abducted three weeks ago. Read the BBC article and sign the petition.