Independent Newspapers Demanding More Freedom

The Freedom Committee in the Journalist Syndicate called to improve the professions conditions in addition to giving more freedom to writers and authors as well as eliminating the injustice befalling some journalists.
 
The committee in its statement has identified the demands of journalists signed by dozens of chief editors of partisan and independent newspapers.
 
The statement stressed that there is some kind of agreement on a set of demands such as improving wages and salaries and developing a specific mechanism for that, in particular the need to accelerate in the implementation of the project of the Syndicate submitted before the Supreme Council for Press to structure the wages of the journalists in accordance with the current inflation rates, agreed upon by the Syndicate’s General Assembly on March 2006, in addition to improving the pensions of old people who spent their life working in their occupations, to protect their rights after retirement and to refuse their transfer from workers list after receiving the pension of the Journalist Syndicate.
 
The statement stressed the importance of abolishing the imprisonment in cases of publication and opinion , not to hold suit against journalists and writer in accordance to the Hesba system, refusing the control of members of politics committee over the so-called national newspapers and to reconsider its ownership in order to become national, to ensure the freedom of publishing newspapers, circulation of information and emphasising the principle of non-extension for press leaders in the national newspapers after reaching 65 years of age to make room for other generations.
 
The statement also demanded the release of prisoner of opinion, journalist Magdy Ahmad Hussein and all prisoners of opinion in Egypt and refused all human rights violations, the re-opening of closed newspapers, especially the People Newspaper and the Voice of Arabs and to make every possible effort to assist journalists affected by this closure.
 
The statement called the journalist fellows, members of the General Assembly to adopt these demands and to announce it on 6th April strike, which is going to be a public outrage day and to call for a strike starting from 2:00 PM on that day in order to emphasise the rights of journalists for many series of seminars to be held after that to discuss how to implement these demands.