19 Aug 2019 | Media Freedom, Middle East and North Africa, News and features, Syria
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His absolute independence is what saved him in all the years that he stayed in Raqqa, the Syrian city where photographer Aboud Hamam was born and raised and that he refused to leave, even during the years that Isis was in charge. Under the current rule, he finally let go of his pseudonym for years, Nur Firat. “I miss Nur Firat sometimes,” Hamam said during a recent interview in Raqqa. “He achieved a lot.”
The interview takes place at the banks of the river Euphrates, which streams through the city. There is a tea garden, if you can call it that: five broken plastic chairs under the trees and around a small water basin, where fresh tea is served in small glasses. In one of the trees, a garden hose is wrapped around a branch. Tiny holes are punctured in it, causing a fine, lukewarm rain to drizzle down on the tea drinkers. Aboud Hamam comes here daily to escape the summer heat. The rest of the day, he walks through Raqqa, both his professional camera and his smartphone always ready to shoot. Hamam said: “Most of my colleagues are in Europe or the US now; most of them I don’t even know exactly where. I will never leave. I want to share the real picture of the city.”
In the early days of the Syrian uprising and the subsequent Syrian war, Hamam worked for Sana, the Syrian state news agency. He worked mostly in Damascus and earned a good income. It is in those days that he first started to use the pseudonym Nur Firat – the last name is Arabic for Euphrates. Hamam explained: “I used it for photos that could get me in trouble with certain groups in the conflict. Sometimes, mostly when there were jihadists on the pictures, I wouldn’t use a name at all.”
Aboud Hamam. Credit: Aboud Hamam
In 2013 Hamam decided to quit working for the regime’s news agency. He returned to Raqqa, where the Free Syrian Army was trying to take control, and started working for Reuters. During much of 2013, several groups, among them jihadists, tried to take the upper hand, until, in the early days of 2014, Isis won. Soon, the group declared Raqqa the “capital” of its so-called caliphate. It is in these times that Abood Hamam made a crucial choice, he explained: “Photographers who were in favour of the FSA, left the city when Isis was getting stronger. Those who returned later were therefore suspected by Isis of FSA sympathies. I hadn’t left, so this suspicion didn’t apply to me. This is why Isis didn’t bother me.”
He continued photographing. “Isis allowed photographers to take photos of things they wanted the world to know,” Hamam said, “but I secretly took other pictures too, for example of their tortures and crimes. Those I shared under my pseudonym.”
He smiled when he added: “Sometimes I used the name Abu Nur Libiye, because I had made some foreign fighters believe that I was from Libya.”
He left Raqqa for five months to visit his family, which had taken refuge in Saudi Arabia. When he came back, permission to take pictures had ended because too many images came out that Isis didn’t approve of. “I confined to taking pictures of trees by the river,” Hamam remembered. “There were eyes on me all the time, at every checkpoint they would check the photos on my phone.”
Didn’t Isis try to coerce him to work for them? Hamam: “They did, but I diplomatically refused. The Isis members were not all foreigners and I knew fellow Raqqans at the police, and they knew me from before the war. They would tell their superiors that I was against the regime in Damascus and convinced them to leave me alone.”
Meanwhile, Isis was weakening in both Iraq and Syria. They started losing territory in Syria at the hands of the Syrian Democratic Forces, a Kurdish-Arab alliance supported with airstrikes by the international coalition. When the final battle over Raqqa was about to commence in 2017, Aboud Hamam escaped to Idlib – still in opposition hands and currently under heavy Russian bombardment – because the battle would be fierce and civilians were supposed to leave the city. There, he could do his work again, although he had to use his synonym because of the opaque power balances in and around the city. When Isis was defeated in Raqqa, he immediately got ready to return. Two weeks after the SDF’s victory, he did.
“I saw our city, our memories, our childhoods, everything destroyed,” he recalled. “The first day I was in shock, the second day I cried.” Then he set up two Facebook pages, Abood without barriers and Raqqa pictures. “There, I share nice photos. I try to make even the destruction look nice, for example with a picture of a bridal shop next to a destroyed building or a meal with olives eaten in a dusty street. Daily life. It is good for my psychology because I am damaged. And good for the city. I know for some people my pictures were the tipping point in their decision to return to Raqqa.”
Soon after he returned, the SDF security forces detained Hamam. They didn’t know who he was and just saw a man wandering the streets with a camera and living in a half-destroyed house with satellite internet. “When they asked me who I was, I told them I knew the city better than they did. They held me for ten days. Then they concluded I was okay and let me go. They haven’t bothered me since. I can work freely.”
So he wanders the streets again.“I feel like the guardian of the city sometimes. I know every street, I notice every building being renovated or pulled down, I detect every citizen returning,” he says. And Raqqans know him. During lunch in a perfectly renovated restaurant with two destroyed floors on top of it, a group of men and women recognise him and request a selfie, which he agrees to.
He didn’t immediately let go of his pseudonym after the new rulers had come to the city. Nur Firat had become dear to him. But there is something else: “I believe that if you want to tell the real story as a journalist, you have to forget about personal fame. Do you know what’s important to me? That Raqqans trust me. They know I am independent. Some time ago, a sound bomb went off in the city. The SDF said it didn’t mean much. People can be suspicious about that, but if I don’t give it attention on Facebook, people know that it’s nothing to worry about. It makes them feel safer. Journalism doesn’t mean you have to share everything, it means you have to show the reality. Leaving unimportant things out can be part of that.”
Reuters, you could say, is Abood Hamam’s day job, while his heart is in his Facebook pages and with his fellow Raqqans. He smiled and said: “I do miss Nur Firat. He succeeded, he showed a lot. He may have been more successful than I will ever be.”[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”2″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1566207560032-07963279-6fe2-8″ taxonomies=”213″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
9 Aug 2019 | Bahrain, Bahrain Letters, Campaigns -- Featured, Statements
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”108529″ img_size=”full”][vc_column_text]8 August 2019
Dear Amal Clooney,
We, the undersigned Bahraini and international non-governmental organisations, are writing to express our deep concern about the intensifying clampdown on freedom of expression in Bahrain since 2011, especially over the past two years. As the United Kingdom’s Special Envoy on Media Freedom, we hope that you can urge the UK government to abide by its stated commitment to protect journalists and promote free media and to press its ally, Bahrain, to respect freedom of expression and freedom of the press.
Freedom of Expression and Press Freedom restricted
The right to freedom of expression and press freedom are severely restricted in Bahrain and journalists, human rights defenders and activists are targeted for doing their human rights and journalism work. According to the Committee to Protect Journalist (CPJ), six journalists are currently imprisoned in connection with their work. In addition, Reporters without Borders (RSF) has documented seven journalists who have had their citizenship revoked since 2011. Bahrain now sits 167th out of 180 countries in RSF’s Press Freedom Index for 2019, one place lower than in 2018.
The repression intensified in 2017, when the only independent newspaper, Al-Wasat, was forcibly closed down and its employees dismissed. That year, the Ministry of Information Affairs effectively blocked the license renewal of several journalists working for foreign news agencies. Photojournalists and reporters for the Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and a cameraman for Reuters were all denied license renewal. Nazeeha Saeed, award winning correspondent for Radio Monte Carlo Doualiya and France24 was convicted and fined for working for international media outlets without a license. Those outlets, along with a coalition of press-freedom watchdogs, wrote to the King of Bahrain in April 2017 highlighting their concerns.
In Bahrain, criticising the King could result in conviction and a seven-year sentence as the government does not tolerate any form of dissent. Prominent human rights defender, Nabeel Rajab is serving a five-year sentence for using Twitter to expose torture in Bahrain’s Jau Prison and to criticise Saudi Arabia’s war on Yemen. He was also charged for publishing an Op-ed in the New York Times. Opposition activist and high profile blogger, Dr Alduljalil Al-Singace, was jailed for life in 2011, when the government renewed its crackdown on peaceful dissent. In 2017, activist and blogger Najah Yusuf was sexually assaulted by the authorities and sentenced to three years in prison, partly for criticising the Bahrain Grand Prix on social media. Former Al-Wasat employee, Mahmood Al-Jazeeri, was sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment and stripped of his citizenship. The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) declared him arbitrarily detained. Similarly, award-winning photojournalists Ahmed Humaidan and Sayed Ahmed Al-Mousawi continue to languish in prison with the latter also stripped of his citizenship. Photojournalist Hassan Qambar was sentenced to more than 100 years in prison over a “range of absurd charges” according to RSF, namely his coverage of local protests.
Cybercrime Law
We are dismayed that the Bahraini authorities are once again amending anti-terror and cybercrime laws to further criminalise political dissent and civil society activism. The situation is only worsening, following the government’s recent declaration that it intends to crackdown further on critical social media accounts and posts.
On 22 May 2019, the Ministry of Interior (MoI) accused Bahraini journalist Adel Marzooq of cybercrime for analysing politics in the region on Twitter. On 30 May 2019, Bahrain’s MoI announced that “those who follow inciting accounts that promote sedition and circulate their posts will be held legally accountable.” Two days later, a MoI official elaborated that “countering inciting social media accounts that promote sedition and threaten social fabric and civil peace was a national duty and part of the community partnership to protect the security and safety of the nation.”
Social media giant Twitter expressed concern about the Bahraini government’s recent declaration. In a tweet posted on 5 June 2019, Twitter stated that the implementation of such measures would “pose a significant risk to free expression and journalism” in the country. Twitter also provided advice to individuals who wished to view posts from specific accounts without having to follow them, in order to avoid the scrutiny of the Bahraini authorities.
Our hope is that Bahrain’s allies will be inspired by this principled action and follow suit in publicly condemning the growing crackdown on dissent. Regrettably, the UK is yet to take a strong public stance on the matter and instead provides its Gulf ally with unconditional political support, to the detriment of the Bahraini people.
Bahrain Ambassador to UK: Sheikh Fawaz bin Mohammad Al Khalifa
During the time that the Ambassador of the Kingdom of Bahrain to the UK, Sheikh Fawaz bin Mohammad Al Khalifa, has been in post, a number of smear campaigns targeting human rights defenders, activists, journalists and critics have been launched from the embassy in London.
Sheikh Fawaz is a member of the Bahraini royal family and was the president of the Information Affairs Authority (IAA) during the Arab spring, a time when the government systematically cracked down on human rights and civil society. The IAA regulates the state’s media channels and websites, including Bahrain TV and the Bahrain News Agency. The organisation was responsible for shutting down Al-Wasat, the only independent newspaper, leading to the censorship of the press and the deportation of foreign-national journalists and spreading hate speech through IAA-controlled TV stations. In 2009, the year before Sheikh Fawaz’s IAA presidency, Bahrain stood 119th in RSF’s Press Freedom Index. By the time his presidency ended in 2012, Bahrain had fallen to 165th place, attesting to Sheikh Fawaz’s devastating record and legacy on press freedom.
The Bahraini Embassy in London has escalated smear campaigns against human rights defender Nabeel Rajab and blogger Najah Yusuf, to whom they attributed tweets posted eight months after her conviction. The Embassy also justified the prosecution of journalist Nazeeha Saeed, blaming her for not renewing her own credentials as a foreign correspondent.
Despite this evidence being publicly available, the FCO responded to concerns raised about Sheikh Fawaz by a Member of Parliament by asserting that it “thoroughly reviews each State’s appointee as Head of Mission.”
Our Requests
It is evident that the British government prioritises its strategic relations with Bahrain over the right to freedom of expression and press freedom. While trade and security agreements made without a strong human rights component may appear expedient on the surface, in the long term a foreign policy that ignores human rights will likely encourage greater repression which in turn will undermine the UK’s international reputation.
In December 2018 you said that: “states should repeal criminal sanctions in laws that target speech like sedition, blasphemy and defamation, and they should narrow the scope of other laws that can easily be used to silence critical speech.” However, as long as Bahrain’s closest allies refuse to use their leverage to pursue these noble goals, they will remain impossible to achieve in the country.
In light of the above, we hope that you can use your position and access to the UK authorities to urge them to:
- Prevail on their Bahraini counterparts to release prisoners of conscience, including journalists, photojournalists and human rights defenders imprisoned solely for voicing their peaceful opinions, including specifically: Mahmoud Al-Jaziri; Ahmed Humaidan; Sayed Ahmed Al-Mosawi; Hassan Qambar; Najah Yusuf; Dr Abduljalil Al-Singace and Nabeel Rajab;
- Urge the Bahraini government to rescind the administrative ban on the activities of the independent newspaper, Al-Wasat;
- Urge the Bahraini government to allow visits of the Special Rapporteurs on Freedom of Expression and Freedom of Assembly to the country; and
- Call on the Bahraini government to lift the vague and overly broad cybercrime laws imposed to silence the right to freedom of expression and end legislation criminalising human rights, including criticism of the King.
We would particularly welcome any public statements you can make in support of freedom of expression in Bahrain.
Thank you for your time and we look forward to hearing from you soon.
Yours Sincerely,
- Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (BIRD)
- Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB)
- Bahrain Centre for Human Rights (BCHR)
- European Centre for Democracy and Human Rights (ECDHR)
- Gulf Centre for Human Rights (GCHR)
- International Service for Human Rights (ISHR)
- Reporters Without Borders (RSF)
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18 Jun 2019 | Events, News and features, Saudi Arabia
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”107402″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][vc_column_text]On 17 June 2012, blogger Raif Badawi was arrested in Saudi Arabia for “criticising Islam through electronic means” and for apostasy (the abandonment of Islam by a Muslim). He was convicted and sentenced to seven years in prison and 600 lashes, which was later extended to 10 years and 1,000 lashes. Seven years later, his imprisonment continues to spark outrage around the world.
“I think it’s important to show to the Saudi Arabian government that we’re still highlighting these cases even though it’s been seven years since Raif’s imprisonment,” Perla Hinojosa, fellowships and advocacy officer at Index on Censorship said at the vigil held for Badawi outside the Saudi embassy on Monday 17 June.
Badawi started one of the only fora on which Saudi Arabians could communicate freely, especially about issues related to secularism, atheism and liberalism. Though he never formally denounced the Saudi government, his website, Saudi Liberal Network, eventually caught the government’s attention for his posts questioning the country’s adoption of Sharia Law and theocracy. After his arrest, the website was shuttered by the Saudi government. On 30 July 2013, Badawi was convicted, and one and a half years later, on 9 January 2015, he received the first 50 of his lashes.
“In particular it was the lashes that drew widespread international condemnation to what has happened….it does take something particularly horrific to mobilise that kind of action,” said Rebecca Vincent, UK bureau director for Reporters Without Borders. Badawi’s case highlights the Saudi government’s media suppression and harsh corporal punishment.
Badawi’s health declined after his first 50 lashes. The remaining 950 were indefinitely postponed and remains incarcerated. His wife, Ensaf Haidar, and their three children escaped to Canada shortly before his arrest, where they advocate for his release and have legal status as refugees. Badawi faces a 10-year travel ban after his release from prison, though he hopes to one day rejoin his family.
Though Badawi is the face of the struggle for free press in Saudi Arabia, he is far from the only one to be targeted. His website lists four others who have been targeted by the governments of Saudi Arabia or Bahrain for speaking out against government abuses, and there are reports of countless others who have received violent or even capital sentences for offenses as benign as tweeting about atheism. Cat Lucas, programme director of the Writers at Risk Programme at English PEN, explained that “being able to use him to highlight other cases is very helpful.”
Though drawing attention to the issues through personal stories like Badawi’s is important, there has been minimal progress in securing his release. “Even though it was initially condemned internationally we’ve not really seen anything happen as a consequence,” says Vincent. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia has made changes in certain areas, like granting women the right to drive, however the small improvements have not extended to media freedom, Lucas noted. Vincent said that though the Crown Prince’s policies may have initially inspired hope in many Saudis, “when you look at… [policies like] the right of women to drive, many of the activists who campaigned for that are behind bars themselves.”
Lucas said that though–after seven years of protesting for Badawi’s release–the fight for media freedom in Saudi Arabia might seem like an uphill battle, it is important not to lose hope. “It’s the role of organisations like English PEN and Index on Censorship to keep up the pressure on governments including our own, even when it’s many years after the initial arrest or detention of one of our colleagues around the world,” she said.[/vc_column_text][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1560855350907-6af08b0a-d8a9-4″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
12 Jun 2019 | Events
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Join English Pen, Index on Censorship, Reporters Without Borders, the Society of Authors, ALQST and other supporters on 17 June for a special vigil to mark seven years since the arrest of blogger Raif Badawi who remains in prison, with the threat of 950 lashes still looming over him.
Raif bin Muhammad Badawi is a Saudi writer, dissident and activist, as well as the creator of the website Free Saudi Liberals.
Badawi was arrested in 2012 on a charge of “insulting Islam through electronic channels” and brought to court on several charges, including apostasy. In 2013 he was convicted on several charges and sentenced to seven years in prison and 600 lashes. In 2014 his sentence was increased to 10 years in prison, 1000 lashes, and a fine. The flogging was to be carried out over 20 weeks. The first 50 lashes were administered on 9 January 2015. The second flogging has been postponed more than twelve times. The reason for the most recent postponement is unknown, but the previous scheduled floggings were delayed due to Badawi’s poor health. Badawi is known to have hypertension, and his health has worsened since the flogging began.
His wife, Ensaf Haidar, who took refuge in Canada after her life was threatened in Saudi Arabia, has said Badawi will not be able to survive further flogging.[7] Ensaf Haidar has given a series of televised interviews about Badawi’s plight, including at the 2016 Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy.
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