H.E. Bashar al-Assad
President
Office of the President
Damascus,
Arab Republic of Syria
Your Excellency:
We write to protest your country@quot;s part in the continuing worldwide abuse of press freedom. On this day, World Press Freedom Day, there are — to the best of our knowledge — 193 journalists imprisoned in the jails of 29 countries, most of them solely for having done their jobs as journalists. Syria is one of the 29,
and we are informed that your country is holding three journalists in prison.
The three imprisoned journalists whose cases we know about are: Nu@quot;man Ali Abdu, jailed since 1992.
A journalist for the Lebanese monthly, Al Tarik, he was sentenced in 1993 to 15 years in prison, apparently due to his membership in the Party for Communist Action. Held in a detention center in Damascus, he is said to suffer from a leg wound.
Massoud Hamid has been jailed since July 24, 2003. As a journalism student, he was arrested while writing an examination at Damascus University — a month after he posted photographs of a peaceful Kurdish demonstration on a Kurdish-language Web Site. We are informed that he is being held secretly, with no official confirmation, and that he has allegedly been mistreated.
Abdel Rahman Shagouri has been jailed since February 23, 2003. He was the first cyber-dissident jailed in Syria. He was arrested for sending the daily e-mail newsletter, Levant News , from a banned web site. Levant News posts political news, particularly news about Syrian political prisoners. We understand that Shagouri has been held in solitary confinement, tortured and not yet brought to trial. He is expected to be tried at some point by the Supreme Court for State Security, a military tribunal whose decisions cannot be appealed.
Your Excellency, these prisoners should be released both on principle and as a matter of expediency. The principle is embodied in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This Declaration guarantees to everyone the rights of freedom of opinion and of expression through any media regardless of frontiers. As a practical matter, current events show that a nation that stifles freedom of thought and expression forfeits the good opinion of the world and isolates itself. This may prompt political or economic sanctions , with loss of diplomatic influence and domestic prosperity. It can mean that the country tolerating such violations of human freedom will become a pariah among nations.
The Overseas Press Club of America, an independent organization that has defended press freedom around the world for 65 years, urges you to re-think your policy. We sincerely believe that Syria would be strengthened in world affairs by allowing free expression of ideas and opinions. Therefore, we urge you to release the three journalists cited above.
The courtesy of a reply would be appreciated.
Respectfully yours,
George Bookman
Norman A. Schorr
Freedom of the Press Committee