Two refugee journalists in Turkey risk deportation to Syria
“Sending them back to Syria is to send them back to imprisonment, disappearance, or even death,” says RSF.
Syria: New cybercrime law is another attempt to repress online free expression
The Gulf Centre for Human Rights (GCHR) says the new law contains several vaguely-defined articles that violate the right to freedom of expression and threaten digital rights and online privacy.
The realities of Syria’s disappeared, arbitrarily detained, and their families
A new guide explores the dire risks and challenges facing the families of Syria’s disappeared, abducted, and arbitrarily detained.
Syrian media struggles to report on the pandemic
A new study by The Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression revealed significant gaps in the Syrian media’s coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic, especially in disseminating accurate, depoliticized information, and countering misinformation.
Syria: A black hole for media workers
Over the past decade, media and journalists in Syria faced violations against their work an average of once every three days, reveals a new report from the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression.
The devastating toll of Syria’s uprising on journalists
On the tenth anniversary of the anti-government uprising that began Syria’s civil war, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) evaluates this war’s devastating impact on the country’s media and journalists, of whom hundreds have been killed and at least another hundred have disappeared or have fled abroad.
Syria: Eight arrested for critical online posts
As part of an ongoing campaign to “combat the spread of false news and rumours” on social media, authorities arrest eight people for their Facebook posts, including prominent Damascus-based TV presenter Hala Al-Jarf.
Syria: Thousands of prisoners at risk of infection from the COVID-19 outbreak
A lack of government transparency and access to health records, as well as overcrowded, unsanitary detention centers are putting thousands of Syrian prisoners at risk of infection from the COVID-19 virus. Rights groups call for the release of detainees, including political prisoners and human rights defenders whose numbers remain largely unknown.
Syria: Women journalists facing smear campaigns and sexist attacks
Women reporting from Syria’s Idlib region are faced with online smear campaigns and threats of violence in an increasingly polarized media landscape.
The Disappeared: Where are Syria’s forcibly disappeared activists?
Rights groups issue a joint statement on the missing, detained and forcibly disappeared human rights defenders in Syria, calling for their release, and an end to the culture of impunity for perpetrators of crimes against humanity.
Syrian photojournalist Amjad Hassan Bakir killed in suspected regime missile strike
Bakir was embedded with the Free Idlib Army whose fighters were in a truck that was hit by a plane-fired missile.
Syria: Detention, harassment in retaken areas
Active combat has ended in much of Syria, but nothing has changed in the way intelligence branches trample rights of perceived opponents of Assad’s rule.
‘Envision a new war’: The Syrian Archive, corporate censorship and the struggle to preserve public history online
Social media companies are censoring images of war. The Syrian Archive is working to preserve them.
Well-known Syrian citizen-journalist probably died in detention in 2013
Ali Mahmoud Othman’s family was recently told he died in detention and is seeking official confirmation of his death and the return of his body.
Germany arrests two Syrians for alleged crimes against humanity
Anwar R. (56) and Eyad A. (42) are being charged with torturing detainees while they were Syrian intelligence officers in 2011 and 2012.
Five years have passed since Syrian citizen-journalist Amir Hamed was abducted
Amir Hamed was abducted by gunmen from his home in Derbasiyah, North-Eastern Syria, on 11 January 2014. His whereabouts are still a mystery.