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Muslim leaders in Argentina call for responsible coverage of news

Saturday, 31 January 2015 8:15 AM [ Last Update: Saturday, 31 January 2015 8:14 AM ]

Manoel Giffoni
Press TV, Buenos Aires

Several domestic and international right-wing news outlets took advantage of the suspicious death of the special prosecutor Alberto Nisman to resume a fierce media campaign aimed at stigmatizing the Muslim community.

Nisman had accused the Argentine President and top officials of covering up the Islamic Republic of Iran’s alleged involvement in the AMIA Jewish center bombing in 1994; a claim that Tehran strongly rejects. In response to the smear campaign, Islamic leaders gathered in Buenos Aires to raise awareness of Islam as a religion of peace.

The Muslim leaders said they certainly believed there were political interests behind Nisman’s accusations as those were suspiciously filed right before the court would start an investigation to determine if local and foreign intelligence services mislead the probe in order to frame Iran in the AMIA case.

They also criticized the mainstream media’s coverage of the latest events and called for a more responsible approach.

Although Argentina has one of the largest Muslim communities in Latin America, the country has recently experienced waves of Islamophobia due to the smear campaign of some right-wing media. Right after the AMIA bombings, for instance, many of those news outlets spread that being Muslim should be considered evidence in finding the suspects.

At the end of the gathering the community leaders met the representatives of independent media and affirmed that after the AMIA bombing the Islamic community unfairly suffered the consequences of the right-wing media’s persecution.

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