WITNESS Joins Reporters Without Borders, Hivos and Others in Condemning Arrests of Syrian Journalists, Human Rights Activists and Bloggers in Raid

We are sharing the statement published February 16, 2012 on Reporters Without Borders website. 

Reporters Without Borders roundly condemns today’s arrest of Mazen Darwish, the head of the Syrian Centre for Media and Freedom of Expression. Security forces arrested him during a raid on his office in Damascus at midday together with his companion Yara Badr and the blogger Razan Ghazzawi.

Twelve other people, including employees of the centre, journalists, bloggers and human rights activists, were arrested during the raid. They were identified as Hanadi Zahlout, Hussein Greir, Hani Z’itani, Sana Z’itani, Rita Dayoub, Joan Farso, Bassam Al-Ahmad, Mayada Al-Khalil, Maha Al-Assablani, Mansour Hamid and Abdelrahman Hamadah.

Assablani was freed a few hours later but she is facing the possibility of deportation.

Reporters Without Borders is extremely concerned for the physical safety of the others and calls for their immediate release.

Darwish has had run-ins with the authorities before. He was questioned by intelligence officials in Damascus for four hours on the evening of 22 March 2011 and was interrogated again the next day.

A week before that, on 16 March, he was briefly arrested while attending a peaceful sit-in outside the interior ministry in Damascus as an observer. His centre, which is the only NGO in Syria that monitors the media and the Internet, has been closed by the authorities twice, in 2005 and 2009.

Ghazzawi was previously arrested on 4 December as she was about to cross the border into Jordan and was held for two weeks.

Zahlout, a blogger, has been arrested three times before. The last time she was arrested, on 4 August 2011, she was held until 30 November. Greir, who is also a blogger, was previously the victim of an abduction-style arrest on 24 October and was released on 1 December (http://en.rsf.org/syrie-arrest-of-noted-blogger-shows-no-05-12-2011,41512.html).

The Syrian Centre for Media and Freedom of Expression was accorded consultative status by the United Nations Economic and Social Council in July 2011. Darwish received the Roland Berger Human Dignity Award in October 2011.