Friday, December 27

Calls rise for accountability in Assad's crimes against journalists in Syria

 

FILE – A man holds a sign honoring Sunday Times journalist Marie Colvin after a memorial service, outside St Martin in the Field in London, May 16, 2012.

WASHINGTON —

When news broke about the fall of President Bashar al-Assad\’s government in Syria this week, photojournalist Paul Conroy found himself thinking about a former colleague, Marie Colvin.

An American journalist, Colvin was killed in February 2012 in the city of Homs when the Syrian military shelled the media center she was in. French photographer Remi Ochlik was also killed, and Conroy and two other journalists were injured.

In 2019, a U.S. court determined that the Syrian military had tracked the broadcasts of the journalists covering the siege of Homs, then deliberately targeted the makeshift media center.

“That was a good moral victory,” Conroy said about the ruling. But now that Assad’s government has collapsed, Conroy hopes more justice will come.

“I think there’s a lot more to come out now that Syria has opened up,” he told VOA from Odesa, where he has been covering the war in Ukraine. Conroy said that access to government records might provide more evidence about the crimes committed by Assad and his government.

“The aim is twofold — primarily the justice and accountability for Syrian citizens, but also the press,” he said.

FILE – Syrian Red Crescent workers stand with the coffins of American journalist Marie Colvin, left, and French photojournalist Remi Ochlik at Assad hospital in Damascus, Syria, March 3, 2012.

Conroy joins a chorus of press freedom and rights groups, as well as U.S. President Joe Biden, calling for accountability for actions taken by the Assad government.

Syria has long been one of the most dangerous places in the world for journalists. The Committee to Protect Journalists, or CPJ, has documented 141 journalists killed between 2011, when the civil war began, and 2024.

Of those, CPJ said that at least 23 were classified as murders, including the cases of Colvin and Ochlik, and six deaths occurred in government custody. The New York-based press freedom group ranks Syria fourth in the world in terms of impunity in journalist killings.

Meanwhile, Reporters Without Borders, known as RSF, determined that as of Monday, 23 journalists were jailed in Syria, and 10 others were missing.

“We’re very concerned about their well-being,” Jonathan Dagher, the head of RSF’s Middle East desk, told VOA from Paris.

The press freedom group is investigating “where they have been, if they’re still alive, which is a very grim thing to say, but for many, we haven’t had the sign of life in years,” Dagher said.

Rebels led by the Islamist militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, took control of the major cities of Aleppo, Hama and then the capital, Damascus, over the past week. In those cities, thousands of prisoners have been released.

Among them, according to RSF, are Hanin Gebran, a journalist with Syria Media Monitor who had been detained since June 2024, and Tal al-Mallouhi, a blogger who had been detained since 2009.

The fact that there was no sign for years that al-Mallouhi was alive is cause for hope that other jailed journalists may be alive, too, Dagher said.

Among the journalists still missing is American reporter Austin Tice, who has been detained in Syria since 2012. His family announced last week that they have received information vetted by the U.S. government that confirms Tice is alive and detained in Damascus.

Following Assad’s ousting, Biden said the U.S. remained committed to securing Tice’s release. But his exact whereabouts are unclear.








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Assad downfall comes as family of American journalist held captive in Syria confirms he is alive and well




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