Syria

Responding to restrictions and attacks on its staff, Al-Jazeera has suspended its operations inside Syria indefinitely, the Qatar-based news network told the Committee to Protect Journalists today. Damascus has subjected Syrian employees of Al-Jazeera to sustained pressure to resign from the widely viewed satellite news channel, the station's Public Liberties and Human Rights Section told CPJ...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has obtained information about the charges brought against the journalist and writer Fayez Sara, who arrested on April 11 in Damascus, and the blogger Kamal Hussein Sheikhou, who was arrested during a demonstration outside the interior ministry on March 15. The press freedom organisation called for the withdrawal of the charges...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has called on the Syrian government to free nearly a dozen journalists and netizens it has imprisoned as it battles protests against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. “The terror and arbitrary rule must end,” the media freedom organisation said, “and all those held, as well as prisoners of conscience, must be released.” Among...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has called on Syrian authorities to release journalist Mohamad Zaid Mastou, who was arrested on April 6 in Damascus by security agents and taken to an undisclosed location. "The manner of his arrest and the lack of information about his whereabouts raise concerns for his safety and wellbeing," said Jim Boumelha, IFJ President. "The Syrian regime...

The Reuters news agency says Syrian authorities have freed one of its photographers after holding him for six days. Reuters said the 50-year-old Khaled al-Hariri was freed Sunday and told colleagues that he was well. Al-Hariri was one of four Reuters journalists held over the last week in Syria. The other three have already been released and ordered to leave the country. A fifth Reuters journalist...

Two Beirut-based Lebanese journalists working for Reuters television have been missing in Syria since the evening of March 26. The Syrian government also withdrew the accreditation of the Reuters correspondent in Damascus the previous day. Syrian authorities have been tightening security in recent days in order to enforce a news blackout on anti-government demonstrations and on the violence being...

Syrian authorities have imposed censorship on national and foreign news media seeking to cover events in the southern city of Deraa. The security forces have blocked access to the city so that there is no one to witness their ruthless crackdown on the protests that have been taking place there during the past few days, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF)...

Mazen Darwish, the head of the Syrian Centre for Media and Freedom of Expression, was summoned for questioning by intelligence officials at 11 a.m. Wednesday in Damascus and has not been heard of since. He has almost certainly been arrested, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Darwish was detained for four hours on the evening of March 22 after responding...

Mazen Darwich, the founder of the Syrian Centre for Media and Free Expression, was arrested Wednesday while he attended a peaceful sit-in outside the interior ministry in Damascus as an observer. Around 30 of the demonstrators were also arrested, Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. “The Syrian government has been controlling news and information for years...

A three-year jail sentence has been imposed by a Damascus military court on writer and journalist Ali Al-Abdallah on a charge of “intending to harm Syria’s relations with another state” under article 278 of the criminal code. The court ruled that he would have to serve 18 months of the sentence, Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. The charge was based on...