The Tunisian Federation of Newspaper Managers expresses its solidarity with the National Union of Tunisian Journalists
The Steering Committee of the Tunisian Federation of Newspaper Directors (FTDJ) considered that there was no reason for the Assembly of People’s Representatives (ARP) to exclude journalists from the private, associative and international media from the coverage of the plenary on the draft ARP rules of procedure, scheduled for 11 April.
In its press release, published on Monday and relayed by the Tunis Afrique Presse Agency (TAP/official), the FTDJ expressed its solidarity with the National Union of Tunisian Journalists (SNJT) and with all the journalists and photographers banned from cover the plenary session, unlike their colleagues in the public media.
Earlier in the day, the Parliament announced that foreign and private media were not allowed to cover the plenary sessions devoted to the examination of the draft rules of procedure. Only the public media can attend the work of the plenary sessions, which should start tomorrow morning and will be broadcast by the al-Watanya channel, as well as the ARP’s Youtube channel.
The ARP would like to point out that the public, private and foreign media will be invited to designate their representatives responsible for covering the work of the ARP, after the adoption of the rules of procedure which will be examined and voted on in plenary.
The SNJT called, in a press release, for a “boycott” of the work of the plenary of the Assembly of People’s Representatives (ARP) devoted to examining the rules of procedure of Parliament and encouraged all journalists to organize a protest demonstration in front of Parliament on Tuesday April 11 from 9:30 a.m. to defend their right of access to Parliament.
The SNJT also urged the deputies, as well as the civil and political forces, to denounce these retrograde practices and these “parachuted” decisions by mobilizing and supporting the journalists in their fight for the respect of the freedom of the press and the right from the citizen to information.
