Press freedom watchdog calls for arrest of gunmen who stormed Kurdish TV station in Baghdad

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The Metro Center for Journalists Rights and Advocacy on Saturday condemned, "in the strongest terms," the storming of the Baghdad office of UTV, a Kurdistan Region-based satellite news channel.

According to witnesses, unknown armed men raided the building on Thursday, threatened and intimidated employees, and shut it down. In response, the media rights watchdog "called on the relevant security authorities to protect the office and its employees, arrest the perpetrators, and hand them over to the judiciary."

The Metro Center said in a statement that "this act constitutes a violation of the Iraqi constitution, which guarantees the right of expression and freedom of the media, and this places the responsibility of the executive authorities, particularly the security ones, to protect this right, arrest the members of this group and bring them to justice.

According to a recent report of the Committee for the Protection of Journalists (CPJ) for this year, Iraq comes third in the global ranking of impunity for killers of journalists.

The Metro Center was established in Sulaimiani in 2009 by a group of journalists and human rights advocates and supported by the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR). The organization aims to monitor the free press throughout the Kurdistan Region.