The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) expressed concern on Monday over the suspension of the Iraqi political talk show Al-Haq Yuqal (The Truth Be Told), hosted by journalist Adnan Al-Taie, and urged the Iraqi authorities to restore the program.

Iraqi authorities, citing “violations of public decency,” suspended the program for seven days and ordered past episodes to be removed from the channel’s platforms. While the authorities cited articles of the national broadcasting code that the program supposedly violated, no specific episode was mentioned. CPJ’s regional director, Sara Qudah, emphasized that the suspension of the program without a specific reason contributes to the general restriction on press freedom. Qudah urged Iraqi authorities to “end their legal harassment of the press and ensure that journalists and media outlets can operate freely, without fear of legal intimidation.”

The suspension of the program took place amid a global attack on press freedom. Recently, examples have been cited in Morocco, Macao, Kyrgyzstan, Indonesia, Serbia, and other countries.

There has also been a pattern of diminishing human rights in Iraq, reported on by various human rights groups. One of the critiqued changes was the personal status law amendment that came into effect this March. A focus of the amendment was the establishment of the legally permissible age of marriage to be 15 with the permission of a judge, which gave rise to a wave of concern from rights groups. Human Rights Watch noted that the amendment violates international law, specifically the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Additionally, Amnesty International informed of the Iraqi government’s failure to deliver justice for the lethal crackdown on the 2019 Tishreen protests. While a large portion of families were compensated for the death of a loved one, injured victims faced bureaucratic hurdles to accessing compensation. In addition, there was a grossly inadequate number of legal proceedings against the perpetrators.