Syria

“If you speak your mind, or exercise a right to freedom of speech, you get killed. You get tortured. There’s no law to protect Syrians,” said Leila Nachawati, the editor of Syria Untold.

Times writer Anthony Lloyd and photographer Jack Hill had spent several days reporting from the city of Aleppo and were returning to the Turkish border early on 14 May when the car they were travelling in was forced to the side of the road.

Over one and a half years after the disappearance of renowned Syrian human rights lawyer Khalil Ma’touq. Rights organisations have come together to reiterate their call on the Syrian authorities to release him immediately and unconditionally.

French journalists who had been held in northern Syria by Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) since June 2013 – Didier François, Edouard Elias, Nicolas Hénin and Pierre Torres – were released at the Turkish border on 18 April 2014.

On 14 April, three Lebanese journalists working for Hezbollah’s al-Manar television station, were shot while covering fighting between government forces and insurgents in Maaloula, north of Damascus.

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Much of the reporting that has come out of Syria in recent months has been done by freelance journalists and citizen journalists who face particular threats when reporting in one of the most dangerous locations on the planet.

El Mundo correspondent Javier Espinosa and freelance photographer Ricardo Garcia Vilanova were freed on 30 March 2014, and handed over to the Turkish military. They had been seized by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) near the Turkish border in September 2013.

The government of Syria should immediately and unconditionally release the arbitrarily detained human rights defender Mazen Darwish and his colleagues Hani Al-Zitani and Hussein Ghareer, 61 human rights organizations said on 17 March 2014.

A new website was launched on 14 March 2014 by a group of international human rights groups to shed light on the plight of Syrian civil society activists who have been targeted for their work or peaceful activism.

Journalist Omar Abdel Qader was shot by a sniper while covering clashes between regime forces and rebels in the province of Deir Ezzor.

Canadian freelance photographer Ali Mustafa was killed by a barrel bomb in the Aleppo district Al-Hadariyeh on 9 March while photographing the death and destruction cause by an earlier bomb.

Shibal Ibrahim, an online writer and activist from Syria’s Kurdish minority who was detained in the country’s prisons for more than 20 months, was released in May 2013. Now out of Syria, he talked to PEN International about his experience in detention.

RWB is immensely relieved to learn that Marc Marginedas, a veteran war reporter for the Barcelona-based “El Periódico” newspaper, was released in Syria after six months in captivity and is now back in Spain, where he has been reunited with his family.

On 17 February 2014, the home of detained human rights defender Khalil Ma’touq in Damascus was raided by security forces. His daughter, Ranim an art student, was arrested and his 17 year old son was beaten during the raid.

A community radio station in north-eastern Syria suspended all of its programming on 19 February 2014 to protest an order issued by local authorities to temporarily halt its news reports in the largely Kurdish region. The order has since been lifted.