02 Aug 17 | Campaigns, Campaigns -- Featured, Digital Freedom, Digital Freedom Statements, Middle East and North Africa, Statements, Syria
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2013 Freedom of Expression Digital Activism Award-winning Bassel Khartabil.
Index on Censorship mourns the death of 2013 Freedom of Expression Digital Activism Award-winning Bassel Khartabil, who had been held Syrian prisons since 2012. His execution by the Syrian government was announced by his wife, Noura Ghazi Safadi, on Tuesday 1 August 2017.
“Bassel was a true inspiration and hero for us all. Index joins with outraged members of the international community to mourn the death of Bassel, who lived and died for his belief in freedom of speech, transparency and a free internet. We extend our deepest condolences to his family,” Melody Patry, head of advocacy, Index on Censorship said.
A Syrian-born Palestinian digital activist, Khartabil (aka Bassel Safadi) worked to build a career in software and web development. Before his arrest, he used his technical expertise to help advance freedom of speech and access to information via the internet. Among other projects, he founded Creative Commons Syria, a non-profit organisation that enables people to share artistic and other work using free legal tools. Khartabil’s digital work is still advancing knowledge: colleagues produced a 3D model of the ancient Palmyra ruins destroyed by Isis using data collected by Khartabil before his detention.
In 2010, Khartabil started Syria’s first hackerspace, Aiki Lab, in Damascus. It was a base from which he helped advance the open source movement in Syria. Khartabil is also known for his work on free culture projects such as Mozilla Firefox, and was an avid contributor and editor to Wikipedia. Prior to his arrest, he was working on software to enable the free flow of information in a country where online communications and networks were closely monitored by the government.
Because of his efforts using technology to promote an open and free internet — especially in Syria, where online censorship is rife — Khartabil won the 2013 Index on Censorship Digital Freedom Award. In 2012, Foreign Policy magazine named him as one of the top 100 global thinkers. In 2015, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology offered him a research scientist position in the Media Lab’s Center for Civic Media.
Detention and death sentence
Syria’s military intelligence illegally detained Khartabil on March 15, 2012. He was held incommunicado in detention for eight months and was subjected to torture and other ill-treatment. He faced military field court proceedings for his peaceful activities in support of freedom of expression. A military judge interrogated Khartabil for a few minutes on December 9, 2012, but he had heard nothing further about his legal case, he told his family later. In December 2012 he was moved to ‘Adra prison in Damascus, where he remained until October 3, 2015, when he was transferred to an undisclosed location. On 12 November 2015, Khartabil’s wife, Noura Ghazi Safadi, reported rumours that her husband had been sentenced to death by the military courts, although the Assad regime never confirmed or denied the reports.
According to anonymous sources, Khartabil’s wife was told that after his disappearance he was tried by a military field court in the military police headquarters in al-Qaboun, which sentenced him to death. Military field courts in Syria are exceptional courts with secret, closed-door proceedings that do not meet international fair trial standards. Defendants have no legal representation, and the courts’ decisions are binding and not subject to appeal. People brought before such courts who were later released have said that proceedings are perfunctory, often lasting only minutes.
Throughout his detention, many human rights groups have campaigned for his release. On 21 April 2015, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention declared his detention a violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and called for his release.
Bassel Khartabil, winner of the 2013 Freedom of Expression Digital Activism Award, was in prison when he won the award. His friends accepted the award on his behalf. From left: Jon Phillips, Dana Trometer and then-chair of Index on Censorship Jonathan Dimbleby.
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14 Mar 17 | Magazine, media freedom featured, News and features, Syria, Volume 45.02 Summer 2016
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”This is the second of a series of articles from the Index on Censorship magazine archives exploring the erosion of media freedom around the world.
Writing in the summer 2016 issue award-winning journalist LINDSEY HILSUM asked if reporters should still be heading to warzones.” google_fonts=”font_family:Libre%20Baskerville%3Aregular%2Citalic%2C700|font_style:400%20italic%3A400%3Aitalic”][vc_single_image image=”76650″ img_size=”large” alignment=”center”][vc_column_text]
THE SUNDAY TIMES war correspondent Marie Colvin used to say that she felt like the last reporter in the YouTube world.
I understand what she meant: old-fashioned journalists like us put a premium on being there, rather than sitting in a newsroom piecing together bits of footage uploaded by activists and journalists more daring or foolish than ourselves. Yet we have to acknowledge the power as well as the limitations of this new kind of reporting.
At Channel 4 News we employ a Lebanese journalist who is a specialist in sourcing video. He knows who uploads the pictures of barrel bomb damage, who destroyed hospitals in Aleppo, who to Skype for a reliable account. Marie might have sniffed, but it’s become an integral part of our coverage – in early May the inmates of Hama prison were filming with their mobile phones and sending out pictures even as government forces tear-gassed them.
It was compelling television, yet left many questions unanswered. The Hama prisoners showed the army about to attack, but not the guards they had themselves taken hostage. We knew their demands, but little of the background – and we weren’t there to probe further.
As Western media organisations cut costs by slashing foreign bureaux, and succumb to pressure constantly to update online, the temptation is to pull it all together in London or Paris or New York rather than venturing out. Danger forms another part of the calculation. Kidnap and beheading is the most extreme form of censorship. In Syria, US photojournalist James Foley was murdered in 2014, several European journalists were later kidnapped and ransomed and the British photographer John Cantlie is still held by IS.
Yet, whatever the risks, in the end being an eyewitness will always be the most honest form of journalism. It is still essential. In Rwanda, in 1994, I watched as the genocide unfolded around me. I reported what I saw: the drunken red-eyed men with machetes at the roadblocks, the blood running in the gutters. And what I heard: Rwandans calling me up to describe how the murderous gangs were banging on their doors and breaking through their windows. There was no substitute for being there.
More recently, travelling on a Syrian government visa, I was among the first journalists to visit the ancient city of Palmyra after regime forces took it back from IS. Beyond the normal journalistic enthusiasm to get to where the story was happening, I feared being used for propaganda. But in fact we were able to move reasonably freely. I could see – and the cameraman could film – the destruction that IS had wrought on the ancient city, and the parallel devastation that government and Russian forces had wrought on the adjacent, modern town of Tadmur. We even managed to film government troops looting people’s houses. None of this could we have seen or understood if we had reported long-distance.
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We monitor threats to press freedom, produce an award-winning magazine and publish work by censored writers.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″ css=”.vc_custom_1489513352356{background-image: url(https://www.indexoncensorship.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/newspapers.jpg?id=50885) !important;background-position: center !important;background-repeat: no-repeat !important;background-size: cover !important;}”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
In a speech at London’s St Bride’s Church, often a hub for journalists, in 2010, Marie said: “We always have to ask ourselves whether the level of risk is worth the story. What is bravery, and what is bravado?”
That is a difficult question. Few mainstream news organisations are willing to let their journalists cross the border from Turkey into Syria these days, because the risk of kidnap is so great. Most editors now understand that they should not buy material from freelancers in places where they would not send their own staff because of the danger.
It’s progress – there was a time when broadcasters and newspapers routinely used freelancers without taking any responsibility for their safety. But it means we are left with the information from prisoners in Hama and citizen journalist reports from Aleppo – better than nothing, filmed by brave people, but frequently incomplete, often confusing, biased, not always easy to interpret.
In February 2012, Marie and photographer Paul Conroy crawled through a sewer to get to Homs, as the Syrian regime’s bombs turned the buildings of rebel-controlled Baba Amr to burnt-out carcasses and rubble. In her dispatches, Marie described the makeshift beds on which children slept underground to avoid the bombs, the operations without anaesthetic, the despair of people who felt they had been abandoned by the world. It was classic, old-fashioned eyewitness reporting.
On 22 February, a government mortar shell killed Marie and the French photographer, Rémi Ochlik. Conroy and the French reporter Edith Bouvier were seriously injured.
Marie felt she had a responsibility to report; she refused to leave it to YouTube. Yet, on this occasion, the risk was too great. Was she brave, or – in her own words – was it bravado? Either way, we are all the poorer because Marie Colvin is no longer reporting from Syria.
Lindsey Hilsum is international editor for Channel 4 News. She is currently writing a biography of Marie Colvin
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]This article appeared in the summer 2016 issue of Index on Censorship magazine.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”From the Archives”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”80560″ img_size=”213×289″ alignment=”center” onclick=”custom_link” link=”http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0306422014526122″][vc_custom_heading text=”Dispatches from the frontlines” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:24|text_align:left” link=”url:http%3A%2F%2Fjournals.sagepub.com%2Fdoi%2Fpdf%2F10.1177%2F0306422014526122|||”][vc_column_text]March 2014
Seasoned foreign correspondent Lyse Doucet discusses war reporting and how it and journalists have changed in the past 25 years.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”80561″ img_size=”213×289″ alignment=”center” onclick=”custom_link” link=”http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0306422014535688″][vc_custom_heading text=”Syria’s inside track: citizens” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:24|text_align:left” link=”url:http%3A%2F%2Fjournals.sagepub.com%2Fdoi%2Fpdf%2F10.1177%2F0306422014535688|||”][vc_column_text]June 2014
Vicky Baker reports on an ambitious project to chart and verify Syria’s countrywide citizen reports, social media updates and news articles.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”92004″ img_size=”213×289″ alignment=”center” onclick=”custom_link” link=”http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03064228908534569″][vc_custom_heading text=”Reporting the Sudan” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:24|text_align:left” link=”url:http%3A%2F%2Fjournals.sagepub.com%2Fdoi%2Fpdf%2F10.1080%2F03064228908534569|||”][vc_column_text]January 1987
Accused of exaggerating’ religious conflict in war-torn Sudan, foreign journalists are frequently barred from entering the country at all.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_custom_heading text=”Danger in truth: truth in danger” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:24|text_align:left” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.indexoncensorship.org%2F2016%2F05%2Fdanger-in-truth-truth-in-danger%2F|||”][vc_column_text]The summer 2016 issue of Index on Censorship magazine looks at why journalists around the world face increasing threats.
In the issue: articles by journalists Lindsey Hilsum and Jean-Paul Marthoz plus Stephen Grey. Special report on dangerous journalism, China’s most famous political cartoonist and the late Henning Mankell on colonialism in Africa.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”80569″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”center” onclick=”custom_link” link=”https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2016/05/danger-in-truth-truth-in-danger/”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_custom_heading text=”Subscribe” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:24|text_align:left” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.indexoncensorship.org%2Fsubscribe%2F|||”][vc_column_text]In print, online. In your mailbox, on your iPad.
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08 Mar 17 | Digital Freedom, media freedom featured, News and features, Syria
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”This is the first of a series of articles from the Index on Censorship magazine archives exploring the erosion of media freedom around the world.
Writing in the summer 2016 issue of the magazine, Syrian citizen journalist HAZZA AL-ADNAN explored the realities of reporting in a country where a pseudonym and bulletproof vest offer little protection from constant danger” google_fonts=”font_family:Libre%20Baskerville%3Aregular%2Citalic%2C700|font_style:400%20italic%3A400%3Aitalic”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
Aleppo: Somehow destroyed buildings and massacres become part of the daily view and even marks to guide people to places. (Photo: Zaina Erhaim)
“THE PSEUDONYM HELPS me to feel safe,” said Ali, a citizen journalist who works under a false name in Syria’s government-held regions. “I always pretend to be completely loyal to Bashar al-Assad’s regime while at the same time I am documenting the abuses perpetrated by his government against the activists and civilians.” Because of fear, many of the journalists inside Syria work under pseudonyms, especially in the government-held areas and those controlled by IS.
Despite the dangers of working as a journalist in Syria, there are still many who strive to report the truth, while trying to minimise the risks to themselves as much as possible. They receive some support and training from Western institutions, from time to time. But most work with local or Middle Eastern media agencies.
“If your aim is to report the truth, you cannot work in areas under government control, because it doesn’t want the truth to come out. You can work in the opposition-controlled areas, but you have to keep hidden from the government forces’ aircraft, and the Russian aircraft, and the IS organisation’s intelligence apparatus,” said Mounaf Abd Almajeed, 26, who works for Fresh Radio, a radio station in Idlib, northwest Syria.
“The government accuses us of terrorism, and the majority of the armed opposition factions do not look upon us favourably, because they confuse intelligence work with journalism,” Abd Almajeed added. “We always have to convince these factions that we are journalists, and not agents of the intelligence organisations of the US or Saudi Arabia or Qatar and so on.”
Some armed opposition factions are extreme Islamists, some of them are moderate Islamists and some of them belong to civilian or secular groups, and there is a state of cold – and sometimes hot – war among them. Abd Almajeed thinks that even if a journalist can gain the trust of a particular faction, the battle is not yet won, because he must now convince the other factions that he has not picked a side or become an agent.
Abd Almajeed tries to minimise the risks of the work by wearing a helmet and bullet-proof jacket when going to areas where clashes are taking place. He rarely works at night for fear of being kidnapped, and he doesn’t ever go to areas held by IS or the government. He believes these precautions have helped him to avoid many injuries, especially around seven months ago, when he was covering one of the battles between government and opposition forces around Aleppo, in northern Syria. When the trench that he was hiding in was targeted in an air raid, which he believes was conducted by Russian aircraft, four journalists were killed, but Mounaf was only slightly injured.
Abd Almajeed believes that Western media NGOs could do more to help by offering the required support to journalists inside opposition areas, but rather have confined their support to Syrian press organisations outside the country.
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row equal_height=”yes” content_placement=”middle” el_class=”text_white” css=”.vc_custom_1488903767246{background-color: #dd1f1f !important;}”][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_custom_heading text=”Protect Media Freedom” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:28|text_align:left” use_theme_fonts=”yes” css_animation=”fadeIn” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.indexoncensorship.org%2Fdefend-media-freedom-donate-index%2F|||”][vc_column_text]
We monitor threats to press freedom, produce an award-winning magazine and publish work by censored writers.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″ css=”.vc_custom_1488903306764{background-image: url(https://www.indexoncensorship.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/newspapers.jpg?id=50885) !important;background-position: center !important;background-repeat: no-repeat !important;background-size: cover !important;}”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
But Ahmed Jalal, 35, editor of the local magazine Al-Manatarah, does not agree. He thinks that the diminished support is due to concern for the safety of their employees, and Syrians working with them, after the country became so dangerous for journalists.
As for the burden of responsibility laid on the journalists inside Syria, Jalal said: “In the early stages of the revolution we did not have a great responsibility to convey the truth to the international community because the door was open to journalists from all over the world, and many of them came in and reported the truth to their communities. But after a year or two of the revolution everything changed because Bashar al-Assad succeeded in getting his propaganda message across to the West that he was fighting terrorists and that the alternative to him was chaos and terrorism.”
Jalal believes that IS’s pursuit of journalists, and execution of some of them, forced Western agencies to withdraw their correspondents, and then the opposition factions’ media made repeated mistakes until the world began to view the Syrian conflict as a “sectarian war between the Alawites and the Shi’a on the one hand and the Sunnis on the other, or as a fundamentalist Islamic revolution that crossed borders, and not a people’s revolution”.
Jalal sighed, took a drag on his cigarette, and continued: “Our responsibility has become great, it is now up to us to convince the international community that we are reporting the truth, which can be expressed as the aspirations for freedom and justice of a people that a criminal regime is killing – and this is what compels us to risk our lives.”
Working under a pseudonym and wearing bullet-proof jackets is all journalists inside Syria can do to minimise the risks, according to Jalal, because nobody recognises the immunity of journalists, and nobody respects the international laws and conventions governing their work. He said: “We are in a jungle … all we can do is persevere, coping with the fear and the grief. However much we try to minimise the risks; hardly a week goes by without our losing a friend or colleague, who has died covering some battle or other, or in the bombing of civilians by government forces or their allies, or in an execution by Da’esh [IS].”
The editor said: “Hardly a day goes by without our seeing the dead body of a child torn apart by Bashar al-Assad’s aircraft.” In the opposition-held areas, ordinary citizens do not look upon journalists favourably.
Jalal added: “Every time we go to take a photograph we encounter people who refuse and say ‘You media people take photos and rake in the money and we get bombed by Bashar al-Assad’s planes because of you taking pictures.’”
Many journalists inside Syria want their output to reach the international community. “Unfortunately, it rarely gets through because most of the journalists in these areas do not possess English or the skills to communicate with the outside world, so when talking to the world they rely on compassion rather than understanding,” said Jalal.
Jalal wishes the armed opposition factions would invite Western media organisations into their areas and provide them with protection. And if that is impossible, then he asks “powerful news agencies like Reuters, Agence France-Presse and the Associated Press, and powerful networks like the BBC and CNN” to put trust in local journalists or citizen journalists in these areas.
Ahmed said: “We have now got good journalists inside the opposition-held areas who have received training from Western institutions such as the Institute for War and Peace Reporting and Reporters Without Borders and the CFI [run by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs], and we now have training centres in these areas; all that we lack is the trust of the powerful Western agencies and the networks in us.”
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Translated by Sue Copeland
The writer of this piece, Hazza al-Adnan, was introduced to Index on Censorship by our 2016 Freedom of Expression Award winner Zaina Erhaim.
Erhaim won the journalism award for using her own skills to train other Syrians to be able to tell their stories too.
Erhaim told Index: “Hazza attended the first training I did in Idlib suburb. He is a lawyer and had no experience in journalism at all. After the training, he started publishing on our website [the Institute of War and Peace’s Damascus Bureau], and when their local radio station Fresh was established, he started working as an editor with them. He writes for many Syrian websites and has passed the training I gave to him to more than 30 others.”
[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]This article appeared in the summer 2016 issue of Index on Censorship magazine. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row content_placement=”top”][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_custom_heading text=”Danger in truth: truth in danger” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:24|text_align:left” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.indexoncensorship.org%2F2016%2F05%2Fdanger-in-truth-truth-in-danger%2F|||”][vc_column_text]The summer 2016 issue of Index on Censorship magazine looks at why journalists around the world face increasing threats.
In the issue: articles by journalists Lindsey Hilsum and Jean-Paul Marthoz plus Stephen Grey. Special report on dangerous journalism, China’s most famous political cartoonist and the late Henning Mankell on colonialism in Africa.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”76282″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”center” onclick=”custom_link” link=”https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2016/12/fashion-rules/”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″ css=”.vc_custom_1481888488328{padding-bottom: 50px !important;}”][vc_custom_heading text=”Subscribe” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:24|text_align:left” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.indexoncensorship.org%2Fsubscribe%2F|||”][vc_column_text]In print, online. In your mailbox, on your iPad.
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22 Dec 16 | Magazine, News and features, Syria, Volume 45.02 Summer 2016
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Syrian citizen journalist HAZZA AL-ADNAN writes in the summer 2016 Index on Censorship magazine on the realities of reporting in a country where a pseudonym and bulletproof vest offer little protection from constant danger” google_fonts=”font_family:Libre%20Baskerville%3Aregular%2Citalic%2C700|font_style:400%20italic%3A400%3Aitalic”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
Aleppo: Somehow destroyed buildings and massacres become part of the daily view and even marks to guide people to places. (Photo: Zaina Erhaim)
“THE PSEUDONYM HELPS me to feel safe,” said Ali, a citizen journalist who works under a false name in Syria’s government-held regions. “I always pretend to be completely loyal to Bashar al-Assad’s regime while at the same time I am documenting the abuses perpetrated by his government against the activists and civilians.” Because of fear, many of the journalists inside Syria work under pseudonyms, especially in the government-held areas and those controlled by IS.
Despite the dangers of working as a journalist in Syria, there are still many who strive to report the truth, while trying to minimise the risks to themselves as much as possible. They receive some support and training from Western institutions, from time to time. But most work with local or Middle Eastern media agencies.
“If your aim is to report the truth, you cannot work in areas under government control, because it doesn’t want the truth to come out. You can work in the opposition-controlled areas, but you have to keep hidden from the government forces’ aircraft, and the Russian aircraft, and the IS organisation’s intelligence apparatus,” said Mounaf Abd Almajeed, 26, who works for Fresh Radio, a radio station in Idlib, northwest Syria.
“The government accuses us of terrorism, and the majority of the armed opposition factions do not look upon us favourably, because they confuse intelligence work with journalism,” Abd Almajeed added. “We always have to convince these factions that we are journalists, and not agents of the intelligence organisations of the US or Saudi Arabia or Qatar and so on.”
Some armed opposition factions are extreme Islamists, some of them are moderate Islamists and some of them belong to civilian or secular groups, and there is a state of cold – and sometimes hot – war among them. Abd Almajeed thinks that even if a journalist can gain the trust of a particular faction, the battle is not yet won, because he must now convince the other factions that he has not picked a side or become an agent.
Abd Almajeed tries to minimise the risks of the work by wearing a helmet and bullet-proof jacket when going to areas where clashes are taking place. He rarely works at night for fear of being kidnapped, and he doesn’t ever go to areas held by IS or the government. He believes these precautions have helped him to avoid many injuries, especially around seven months ago, when he was covering one of the battles between government and opposition forces around Aleppo, in northern Syria. When the trench that he was hiding in was targeted in an air raid, which he believes was conducted by Russian aircraft, four journalists were killed, but Mounaf was only slightly injured.
Abd Almajeed believes that Western media NGOs could do more to help by offering the required support to journalists inside opposition areas, but rather have confined their support to Syrian press organisations outside the country.
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_icon icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left” color=”custom” align=”right” custom_color=”#dd3333″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_custom_heading text=”However much we try to minimise the risks; hardly a week goes by without our losing a friend or colleague” font_container=”tag:h2|text_align:left|color:%23dd3333″ google_fonts=”font_family:Libre%20Baskerville%3Aregular%2Citalic%2C700|font_style:400%20italic%3A400%3Aitalic” css_animation=”fadeIn”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
But Ahmed Jalal, 35, editor of the local magazine Al-Manatarah, does not agree. He thinks that the diminished support is due to concern for the safety of their employees, and Syrians working with them, after the country became so dangerous for journalists.
As for the burden of responsibility laid on the journalists inside Syria, Jalal said: “In the early stages of the revolution we did not have a great responsibility to convey the truth to the international community because the door was open to journalists from all over the world, and many of them came in and reported the truth to their communities. But after a year or two of the revolution everything changed because Bashar al-Assad succeeded in getting his propaganda message across to the West that he was fighting terrorists and that the alternative to him was chaos and terrorism.”
Jalal believes that IS’s pursuit of journalists, and execution of some of them, forced Western agencies to withdraw their correspondents, and then the opposition factions’ media made repeated mistakes until the world began to view the Syrian conflict as a “sectarian war between the Alawites and the Shi’a on the one hand and the Sunnis on the other, or as a fundamentalist Islamic revolution that crossed borders, and not a people’s revolution”.
Jalal sighed, took a drag on his cigarette, and continued: “Our responsibility has become great, it is now up to us to convince the international community that we are reporting the truth, which can be expressed as the aspirations for freedom and justice of a people that a criminal regime is killing – and this is what compels us to risk our lives.”
Working under a pseudonym and wearing bullet-proof jackets is all journalists inside Syria can do to minimise the risks, according to Jalal, because nobody recognises the immunity of journalists, and nobody respects the international laws and conventions governing their work. He said: “We are in a jungle … all we can do is persevere, coping with the fear and the grief. However much we try to minimise the risks; hardly a week goes by without our losing a friend or colleague, who has died covering some battle or other, or in the bombing of civilians by government forces or their allies, or in an execution by Da’esh [IS].”
The editor said: “Hardly a day goes by without our seeing the dead body of a child torn apart by Bashar al-Assad’s aircraft.” In the opposition-held areas, ordinary citizens do not look upon journalists favourably.
Jalal added: “Every time we go to take a photograph we encounter people who refuse and say ‘You media people take photos and rake in the money and we get bombed by Bashar al-Assad’s planes because of you taking pictures.’”
Many journalists inside Syria want their output to reach the international community. “Unfortunately, it rarely gets through because most of the journalists in these areas do not possess English or the skills to communicate with the outside world, so when talking to the world they rely on compassion rather than understanding,” said Jalal.
Jalal wishes the armed opposition factions would invite Western media organisations into their areas and provide them with protection. And if that is impossible, then he asks “powerful news agencies like Reuters, Agence France-Presse and the Associated Press, and powerful networks like the BBC and CNN” to put trust in local journalists or citizen journalists in these areas.
Ahmed said: “We have now got good journalists inside the opposition-held areas who have received training from Western institutions such as the Institute for War and Peace Reporting and Reporters Without Borders and the CFI [run by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs], and we now have training centres in these areas; all that we lack is the trust of the powerful Western agencies and the networks in us.”
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Translated by Sue Copeland
The writer of this piece, Hazza al-Adnan, was introduced to Index on Censorship by our 2016 Freedom of Expression Award winner Zaina Erhaim.
Erhaim won the journalism award for using her own skills to train other Syrians to be able to tell their stories too.
Erhaim told Index: “Hazza attended the first training I did in Idlib suburb. He is a lawyer and had no experience in journalism at all. After the training, he started publishing on our website [the Institute of War and Peace’s Damascus Bureau], and when their local radio station Fresh was established, he started working as an editor with them. He writes for many Syrian websites and has passed the training I gave to him to more than 30 others.”
[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]This article appeared in the summer 2016 issue of Index on Censorship magazine. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”From the Archives”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”80561″ img_size=”213×289″ alignment=”center” onclick=”custom_link” link=”http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0306422014535688″][vc_custom_heading text=”Syria tracker: Syria’s inside track” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:24|text_align:left” link=”url:http%3A%2F%2Fjournals.sagepub.com%2Fdoi%2Fpdf%2F10.1177%2F0306422014535688|||”][vc_column_text]June 2014
Report on an ambitious project to chart and verify countrywide citizen reports, social media updates and news articles.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”89073″ img_size=”213×289″ alignment=”center” onclick=”custom_link” link=”http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0306422013511563″][vc_custom_heading text=”Rise of Turkish citizens’ media” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:24|text_align:left” link=”url:http%3A%2F%2Fjournals.sagepub.com%2Fdoi%2Fpdf%2F10.1177%2F0306422013511563|||”][vc_column_text]December 2013
Turkey’s mainstream media bias made the public turn to a new type of media outlet for their news.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”80562″ img_size=”213×289″ alignment=”center” onclick=”custom_link” link=”http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0306422014548623″][vc_custom_heading text=”Holed up in Harare, Zimbabwe” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:24|text_align:left” link=”url:http%3A%2F%2Fjournals.sagepub.com%2Fdoi%2Fpdf%2F10.1177%2F0306422014548623|||”][vc_column_text]September 2014
Natasha Joseph talks to journalists who walk the line of reporting in Zimbabwe, which is dangerous business.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_custom_heading text=”Danger in truth: truth in danger” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:24|text_align:left” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.indexoncensorship.org%2F2016%2F05%2Fdanger-in-truth-truth-in-danger%2F|||”][vc_column_text]The summer 2016 issue of Index on Censorship magazine looks at why journalists around the world face increasing threats.
In the issue: articles by journalists Lindsey Hilsum and Jean-Paul Marthoz plus Stephen Grey. Special report on dangerous journalism, China’s most famous political cartoonist and the late Henning Mankell on colonialism in Africa.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”76282″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”center” onclick=”custom_link” link=”https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2016/05/danger-in-truth-truth-in-danger/”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_custom_heading text=”Subscribe” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:24|text_align:left” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.indexoncensorship.org%2Fsubscribe%2F|||”][vc_column_text]In print, online. In your mailbox, on your iPad.
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