(RSF/IFEX) – On 27 June 2001, a dozen representatives from international media were barred from entering Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s press conference at the Marigny Hotel in Paris. “The filtering at the entrance to this press conference is symptomatic of the methods employed by the Syrian authorities against the foreign press. It is also a […]
(RSF/IFEX) – On 27 June 2001, a dozen representatives from international media were barred from entering Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s press conference at the Marigny Hotel in Paris. “The filtering at the entrance to this press conference is symptomatic of the methods employed by the Syrian authorities against the foreign press. It is also a reflection of their behaviour towards the Syrian press,” noted Robert Ménard, the organisation’s secretary-general. “We have difficulty understanding how the French authorities can remain silent in the face of such discriminatory practices against the press on their own territory,” he added.
RSF recalls that press freedom does not exist in Syria. A Syrian journalist, ‘Adel Isma’il, is imprisoned in Syria since 1996. He was sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment. The journalist Nizar Nayyouf, who was recently released and is gravely ill, has been asking for a passport for over one month, in order to be hospitalised abroad (see IFEX alerts of 25, 22 and 20 June 2001, among others). RSF has placed al-Assad on its list of the thirty predators of press freedom in the world.
On the occasion of the Syrian president’s press conference at the Marigny Hotel on 27 June at 11:00 a.m. (local time), in the context of his state visit to France, the Syrian embassy’s press service barred a dozen media representatives from entering the room. Representatives from the British agency Reuters, the Kuwaiti agency KUNA, Voice of America radio, the French weekly “Courrier International”, the Libyan news agency JANA, the Iraki news agency and several Israeli media, including the daily “Maariv”, were denied entry despite the fact that they had the necessary accreditation. An RSF representative who was also accredited was denied entry. A Syrian embassy official told a journalist that “the Marigny Hotel is under Syrian authority for the duration of the press conference.”
