Pages

السبت، 13 فبراير 2010

Holland : I was fired because of an essay !!


On 26th of January, I received an email that stated firing me as a correspondent of the Radio Netherlands Worldwide RNW in Cairo because of an essay that I published end of last December at an Egyptian Newspaper "NahdetMsr".
The essay was related to a fabricated story published at RNW website on 22nd of August 2009 regarding "promoting Chinese hymen" in the Arab world, saying this artificial hymen is" manufactured especially for Arab and Muslim women". In an e-mail dated on 14th of September 2009, which I still have on my computer, I asked RNW to correct such wrong information soon after I realized that there were many Egyptian /even arab/ websites republished such fake story. The Egyptian websites referred the information to a Syrian website that quoted the RNW as the Only source of the information.

This hymen, which apeaed around 1993 in Japan , was never invented for Muslim women by Chinese manufacturers who realized the "schizophrenia of Muslim and Arab women and their desire of hiding the fact that many women are not virgins" according to the material published by RNW. No one there at RNW made any efforts to correct the non-logical deductions and mistakes, or even filter that published story from the offensive language used against Arabs and Muslims. Such offensive fabricated story should never have been published by any website which is supposed to be aware of press laws and regulations let alone the ethics of journalism. The content of this published material did not include any indications on the availability of such artificial hymens in the Arab markets. My only concern was to defend professionalism and not to allow a website to offend a whole society by inventing and promoting a rumor.
Since I requested the correction of such fabricated story, I have been subject to an arbitrary treatment from the Director of the Arabic Department till he fired me.   I demanded a detailed letter that states the reason for firing me.
In a letter from RNW  they considered my essay (which I published on the Facebook)  an offence that requires firing me from work! 

So...... is such procedure referred to RNW desire to avoid any internal investigation inside the organization?. Such firing came after working for RNW since 2005 and I am an accredited correspondent for the radio since February 2009 with an official attestation letter submitted by RNW to the Egyptian Ministry of Mass Communication.  I wonder why RNW insisted in fighting in defending a fake story against Arabs and Muslims?

However, the RNW refused to pay the salary of my last working month nor even paying an incentive after ending my work. 

I am currently in the process of filing a law suit against RNW due to such arbitrary firing and the maltreatment I received before ending my employment with them for no reason but demanding correcting fabricated information in a place I worked for.   
Please find below the link of my essay in which I did a content analysis of the fabrications published by RNW including other links that showed the actual date of artificial hymen. It also includes the opinion of some specialists regarding this professional scandal which was published on a Dutch website which is partially funded by the Dutch Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Culture. Once you check any search engine, you will see that such fabricated story became a topic to insult Egyptian women as it was perceived as an issue related to Egypt in particular because this cheap material was published as if it was a report from Cairo.! 


Read this news coverage by Global Voices
Press Release by 
The Arab Program For Human Rights Activists: