Gulf | Bahrain
Doha media freedom centre head quits
Robert Menard, the director of the Doha Centre for Media Freedom, has resigned, 14 months after he became director-general of the centre.
- By Habib Toumi, Bureau Chief
- Published: 22:47 June 24, 2009
Manama: Robert Menard, the director of the Doha Centre for Media Freedom, has resigned, 14 months after he became director-general of the centre.
"The Centre has been suffocated. We no longer have either the freedom or the resources to do our work", Menard, the 55-year-old French national who founded Reporters Without Borders, said in a statement adding that his team of heads of the assistance, research and communications departments left with him.
"For several months we have made an independent voice heard, one that has exposed violence with concern for nothing but the truth. We have helped more than 250 endangered journalists and media all over the world, and I think we can be proud of that."
But according to Menard, "some Qatari officials never wanted an independent Centre, free to speak out without concern for politics or diplomacy."
"I was willing to make any necessary compromises as long as the foundations of our work - assistance grants, statements of opinion, were safeguarded. But that is no longer the case. This is a pity. It was the first time that an international organisation for the defence of media freedom had been set up in a country outside the West. It was made possible by the Emir and his wife Shaikha Mozah," he said.
Menard cited "starting an independent news agency for Somali journalists, providing bullet-proof jackets in Somalia, Iraq and Pakistan, opening a press centre in Gaza and supplying newsprint to newspapers in Guinea-Bissau" as among the centre's achievements.
The centre was established in December 2007 by the Qatar Foundation, chaired by Shaikha Mozah, and Reporters Without Borders. Menard became director-general in April 2008.
Rifts between Menard and Qatari officials opened this year after the centre complained its plans for the safe houses for journalists allegedly under threat in their countries crumbled after the administrative documents that would have enabled the centre to take them were not signed.
Qatari officials claimed "giving shelter to journalists from some countries might go against Qatar's diplomatic interests," Menard said.
In March, Menard courted controversy by writing an open letter to Shaikha Mozah to complain about "people close to her and others she has appointed to senior positions at the centre."
He also came under fire from Al Sharq, a Qatari daily, which accused him of endorsing pornography for objecting to internet sex censorship in Dubai.
His situation became untenable among Qataris when Flemming Rose, the cultural editor of Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper that published the controversial cartoons denigrating the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) four years ago, attended a Unesco conference in Doha in May.
The Al Watan daily accused Menard of insulting Muslims and led a campaign against him for hosting the "Danish Satan", a claim he denied.
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