Freedom of the Press 2008 - Syria

Status: Not Free
Legal Environment: 29 (of 30)
Political Environment: 33 (of 40)
Economic Environment: 21 (of 30)
Total Score: 83 (of 100)
(Lower scores = freer)

The Syrian government continued to place severe restrictions on press freedom in 2007. The internet has been increasingly used by critical journalists to voice dissent, although the government has aggressively cracked down on internet freedom in recent years. Although the constitution provides for freedom of speech and of the press, a constellation of repressive laws restricts such rights in practice. First among them is the Emergency Law, in place since December 1962, which broadly mandates the censorship of letters, publications, broadcasts, and other forms of communication. The 2001 Press Law sets out broad control over newspapers, magazines, other periodicals, and virtually all else printed in Syria. It also forbids writing on a wide variety of topics, including reports that touch on what authorities consider to be "national security" or "national unity." Decree No. 6 of 1965 criminalizes "publishing news aimed at shaking the people's confidence in the revolution." Other laws criminalize "opposition to the revolution, its goals, or socialism." At a June 2005 conference of the ruling Baath Party, the Ministry of Information said it was planning to introduce a new press law, but two and a half years later, the law had not been introduced. Syria's first independent press freedom organization, Hurriyat, which was created in 2006 was forced to cease working in 2007 as two of its founders were in prison and a third had left Syria.

Security services detained eight journalists and online writers over the course of 2007, and dozens of people who had criticized the regime or were suspected of opposition to the government were detained. Ali Derbak was arrested on January 28, apparently for writing a poem criticizing Shi'a militias in Iraq. He was released on March 22. Syrian human rights organizations reported that security services held Abd al-Raziq Eid, an academic and prominent civil-rights advocate, for 13 hours because of an article he had written for Beirut's Al-Safeer. The domestic intelligence service held Muhanad Abdel al-Rahman and Alaa al-Din Hamdoun, two journalists reportedly affiliated with an exiled opposition group, for the first weeks of March before releasing them on March 27, the Syrian Organization for Human Rights reported. Security officials detained Ubayd Muhammed, a reporter for Kurdistan Satellite TV, and his wife for two weeks as they were trying to leave the country on March 23. Muhammed alleged he was tortured in custody.

Except for a handful of radio stations that do not broadcast news or report on political issues, radio and television outlets are all state-owned. Private and political party-affiliated newspapers sometimes publish mild criticism of the government, while reporting with relatively greater freedom on social issues and instances of economic corruption. Newspapers such as Al-Watan and Al-Iqtisad, owned by businessmen with close connections to the government, occasionally criticize the government's performance, but within limits. Baladna, owned by the son of the former head of intelligence, was banned for 47 days after it published a cartoon satirizing Syria's legislative assembly. The Ministry of Information bans issues of the foreign press if they contain material the government deems a threat to public order or national security. The London-based, Saudi-funded, regional daily Al-Sharq al-Awsat was unavailable for most of 2007. Satellite dishes are common, and the government makes no attempt to interfere with satellite broadcasts. Recently, Syrian television has broached topics formerly considered taboo and conducted interviews with opposition figures.

The government censors the internet and monitors its use, but some of Syria's 1.5 million Internet users employ a range of techniques to circumvent censorship. On July 25, Communications and Technology Minister Amr Salem issued a decree requiring Web sites to publish the name and email address of anyone writing on it, and threatened to ban Web sites that did not comply. Soon after, the ministry blocked access to damaspost.com, a popular news Web site, after a commenter accused prominent journalists of nepotism. On June 7, Military Intelligence officers detained Karim Arbaji, 29, and held him incommunicado on charges that he moderated the website akhawia.net, a popular site for Syrian youth to discuss social and political issues. On June 30, Military Intelligence officers arrested blogger Tareq Bayasi, 22, and also held him incommunicado, apparently for criticizing Syria's security services online. His whereabouts remained unknown at year's end. On September 23, the Supreme State Security Court sentenced Ali Zein al-Abideen Mej'an to two years in prison for "undertaking acts or writing or speeches unauthorized by the government ... that spoil its ties with a foreign state" because he posted comments online criticizing Saudi Arabia. In a slight increase over the previous year, nearly 8 percent of Syrians accessed the internet in 2007.