(RSF/IFEX) – RSF has condemned the State Security Court’s 10 October 2004 decision to sentence Massud Hamid, a journalism student and member of Syria’s Kurdish minority, to three years in prison. Hamid was found guilty of “belonging to a secret organisation” and “attempting to incorporate part of Syria’s territory into a third country.” The organisation […]
(RSF/IFEX) – RSF has condemned the State Security Court’s 10 October 2004 decision to sentence Massud Hamid, a journalism student and member of Syria’s Kurdish minority, to three years in prison. Hamid was found guilty of “belonging to a secret organisation” and “attempting to incorporate part of Syria’s territory into a third country.”
The organisation called for his immediate release, saying “the trial was completely unwarranted as he was simply exercising his right to circulate information freely on the Internet.” Hamid has already spent more than 14 months in prison.
“The severity of the sentence shows the Syrian authorities want to gag the press in flagrant violation of the international treaties they have signed,” RSF added.
In his second year of journalism school, the 29 year-old student was arrested during an exam at Damascus University on 24 July 2003. A month earlier, he had posted photographs of a peaceful Kurdish demonstration outside UNICEF headquarters in Damascus on http://www.amude.com, a Kurdish-language site based in Germany. The demonstrators were demanding respect for the civil and political rights of Syria’s Kurdish population. Following his arrest, Hamid was detained in Adra prison near Damascus, where he was reportedly mistreated.
Internet access in Syria is limited to a privileged minority. The authorities filter online content and monitor e-mail closely. Two people are currently in prison for posting information online or simply e-mailing content from a banned site.
