World

Call for global media protection

April 15, 2015 6:09 pm

Media freedoms are under threat and governments are using the war on terror as an excuse to limit press freedom, Al Jazeera journalist Peter Greste says.

Mr Greste, a former Radio New Zealand correspondent, was jailed for 400 days in an Egyptian prison along with Al Jazeera colleagues Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed.

They were convicted of supporting the banned Muslim Brotherhood group and sentenced to seven years in prison.

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Mr Greste was released in February and deported to Australia.

His two friends – Mr Mohamed, who is an Egyptian national, and Mr Fahmy, a dual Egyptian-Canadian national – are on bail in Cairo, awaiting retrial.

Mr Greste said the past three years had been the most dangerous for journalists since the Committee to Protect Journalists began keeping records in 1991.

He said the so-called war on terror had left journalists open to attack from governments of all kinds, and he is advocating for a universal charter of media freedoms, which would define the relationship between governments and the media.