20/09/12

A citizen journalist who used the name Abu Hassan to report from the central Syrian city of Hama was burnt to death after regime forces targeted his home in an assault, an activist told AFP on Thursday.

International media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF), meanwhile, warned of the perils facing media workers in the “Bermuda Triangle” of the Syrian conflict, pointing a finger of blame at both the regime and rebels.

An army assault on the Arbaeen district of Hama–one of the main arenas of the country’s anti-regime revolt – on Wednesday left 16 people dead, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

“The army shelled and gunned its way into the Arbaeen district and set fire to a house there,” the Britain-based watchdog said.

According to fellow media activist Abu Ghazi, the house belonged to Abu Hassan, a 27-year-old whose real name was Abdel Karim al-Oqda. Amateur video posted by activists showed four badly burnt bodies laid out on the ground.

“Abu Hassan was at his house with three of his friends,” said Abu Ghazi, charging the army had targeted the home. “They knew very well who he was. The whole of Hama knew how much of the revolution he had filmed.”

Abu Ghazi paid tribute to his fallen colleague.

“Abu Hassan was one of the bravest people I have ever met,” he said. “He sacrificed his life to show the world what is happening in Syria.”

Abu Hassan’s death was the latest in a string of killings and kidnappings of citizen and professional journalists in Syria since the outbreak of the revolt in March 2011.

RSF has previously condemned the killing of 10 professional media workers and 31 citizen journalists.

On Thursday, it denounced the continued disappearance of two journalists working for US-funded Al-Hurra TV, who went missing in the northern city of Aleppo a month ago.

“Syria’s cities have become a ‘Bermuda Triangle’ for journalists,” RSF said. “Telling lies in wartime is not new … but this is like getting facts from a black hole.”

The watchdog called on President Bashar al-Assad’s regime as well as the rebel Free Syrian Army “to realize that making journalists disappear in order to hide what is going on serves no purpose.

“It just sheds an even harsher light on all the disappearances of men, women and children that are taking place.”

With tight official curbs on journalists working in Syria, many media outlets have relied to a great degree on accounts of citizen journalists and activists to report on violence in the war-torn country.

In one of his videos, Abu Hassan is seen explaining why he left his job as a construction worker to take up filming. “I want to expose the crimes that the regime is carrying out … I will film until my last breath,” he says.

-AFP

11/09/12

By Emad El Din Adeeb

I asked my dear friend, [Lebanese] MP Nihad Al-Mashnouq, an extremely naïve question, however his answer was so realistic that it might shock some people!

I asked Nihad, a well-informed expert on Syrian affairs, “Do you think it is hypothetically possible that the idea of stepping down from power has not crossed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s mind?”

Nihad’s answer, which will be broadcast soon and came during a televised interview, was “Never…this man adopts the principle of kill or be killed”

He added “all the delusions and leaks that talk about a peaceful or diplomatic settlement along the lines of the Yemeni transition of power are nonsense.”

If my friend’s views are true then we are facing a bill that is impossible to pay. In my own view, this is true because it is what we have learned from the al-Assad family’s record of crisis management and also because this viewpoint is being put forward by somebody who is perfectly aware of what he is talking about.

The al-Assad regime’s logic of continuous denial and refutation, transforming what is known to be false into the truth and portraying reality however it sees fit means that any anticipation of a quick settlement to the Syrian crisis is nothing more than wishful thinking.

Following Nihad’s words, I began to feel sorry for UN and Arab envoy to Syria Lakhdar Brahimi and his mission, as well as any chance of him achieving success in this regard.

Despite our attitude towards him, Henry Kissinger, one of the most skilful masters of negotiation laid down the ultimate set of principles regarding how to reach a successful settlement. This can be summarized as follows:

Firstly, the two sides must have an overwhelming desire for serious negotiation and must believe that negotiation is the only means of protecting their interests.

Secondly, each party must realize that the cost of the negotiations failing and not reaching a peaceful solution will be more prohibitive than the cost of the concessions that they must make.

Thirdly, those fighting must be exhausted and certain that the fighting will ultimately not produce a victor or loser.

If we were to apply these principles to the political mind-set of Bashar al-Assad, we would discover the following:

- That the Syrian president, according to his interview with Addounia TV, believes that the situation has improved and that he and his regime are on the verge of victory.

- That he sees no point of reaching a settlement, particularly if the price of this is the ouster of him and his regime.

In this case, we are facing a complete contravention of Kissinger’s rules for reaching a successful settlement, and these are principles that he created based on his profound study of the European Metternich system. This all takes us back to Nihad Al-Mashnouq’s words, namely that “we are facing a situation of kill or be killed”, and so as is commonly expressed in the Levantine folk songs, “woe unto us”. 

28/08/12

An Irish soldier who was in Syria on the ill-fated UN mission talks to MARY FITZGERALD , Foreign Affairs Correspondent

AN IRISH soldier who served with the recently disbanded UN observer mission in Syria has said the most shocking element of the conflict for him was the targeted killing of children by forces loyal to the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

Cmdt Mark Hearns spent four months stationed in the restive Homs governorate in central Syria. The region includes Houla, where more than 100 civilians, more than half of them children, were killed in May in a massacre the UN recently concluded was carried out by Syrian government forces and the pro-Assad militia known as shabiha.

“The most shocking thing was the deliberate, targeted killing of innocent children, particularly at Houla,” says Hearns. “It was probably the most heinous activity we encountered. The scale of the killing at Houla was particularly staggering. I didn’t personally see the dead children there but my colleagues did.”

Hearns, whose previous overseas experience includes tours in Afghanistan, Liberia and Lebanon, says the Syria mission, which initially consisted of 300 unarmed observers, six of whom were from Ireland, was the most challenging. “It is probably the most complex and dangerous environment I have operated in. The environment was so volatile and ambiguous, and there were so many things that we didn’t know. Danger was always lurking around the corner.”

These difficulties were compounded by the complexity of the Assad regime’s security apparatus and by the fragmented nature of the opposition.

“As an unarmed peacekeeper, you are reliant on the goodwill of the actors involved and their knowledge of who you are and what you are doing. The problem in Syria is that on the government side there are many actors, many agencies – you have the army and the various intelligence services – with all of them acting in a not necessarily co-ordinated way,” says Hearns.

“On the other side, it’s highly fractured. You can’t really talk about an opposition, you’re talking about oppositions. When you dig deeper … you realise that the only thing many of these groups had in common was their opposition to the government.”

The ill-fated mission suspended most of its activity on June 16th.

“There were just too many incidents where we were being shot at … the pattern and frequency with which that happened just built up to a stage where it was no longer acceptable to take that risk. I would be very careful about pointing fingers. We know both sides, government and opposition, did it.”

Hearns says a vehicle belonging to colleagues was shot at by a Syrian army tank. He and other observers were shot at by opposition forces in the town of Talbisah. “The reason for that was not quite clear. It may have been confusion as to who we were, it may have been a lack of communication, it may have been frustration, we don’t know.”

The Syrian regime, which, according to the plan drawn up by former UN and Arab League envoy Kofi Annan, was required to provide for the observers’ security, tried to restrict movement. “We were in an unusual relationship with the government in that, although they were party to the conflict, they were also the guarantor of our security. I think we did a good job, in the circumstances, of asserting ourselves and maintaining our freedom of movement.”

Relations with opposition forces were fraught at times. “Sometimes there was a question mark over what we were doing when the [government] violence, particularly the use of heavy weapons, was continuing. Around early June the government stated explicitly that it was going back on the offensive … This caused a lot frustration among the opposition, which was frequently taken out on us in the form of verbal abuse.”

The observers withdrew from Syria completely late last month.

“The problem with this mission was that the parties to the conflict did not comply with the agreement made by Annan. We did everything we could,” says Hearns.

He believes the solution to the conflict must come from inside Syria. “What happened has been a tragedy for ordinary Syrians. The vast majority of people I met were not interested in conflict and simply wanted it to end. What happens from here is entirely in the hands of the Syrian people.

“Some kind of strong leadership has to emerge on both sides, people who can find a way to stop the violence and develop some sort of system for negotiating with their opponents towards a peaceful future.”

18/08/2012 #Syria: Battle for Aleppo rages on

Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, is under attack again - as fighting intensifies between rebels and government forces. The battle for Aleppo has been raging for weeks. And as the number of dead and injured grows, hospitals are desperately trying to cope. Al Jazeera’s James Bays reports.

17/08/2012 Damascus, #Syria *GRAPHIC*: Important update by Coordination of Doctors in Homs

“Important !! Please share if you care ! 

NO FOR SLAUGHTERING US ! KILLS US BUT NEVER SLAUGHTER US BY KNIVES !!!!!!!!

 Just today four massacres occurred in different regions, mostly in the countryside of Damascus 

All occurred through the slaughter of the detainees by knives 

Today , More than 60 martyrs where found slaughtered by knives , a number not including the number of other martyrs killed in the shelling , snipers’ shots , torture in detentions !!!! 

Unfortunately, the media did not speak on the subject and a lot of pages did not mention about the growing cases of martyrs being found slaughtered by knives , with hands were tied up and bodies were found near garbage dump . Yesterday 60 martyrs were found like that in Qatana , Damascus Suburbs and another were found in Artooz, Damascus suburbs .

 what is happening nowadays in Syria has not happened before in history !! How long this world will keep silent about the ongoing massacres in Syria !!!!”

17/08/2012 Damascus, #Syria: Four martyrs were slaughtered by the Security Forces in Qadam

15/08/2012 Deir, Ba’alba, Homs, #Syria *GRAPHIC*: This family was on its way to escape from the shelling on the neighborhood when Assad’s criminal force fired a shell on their car at the gas station resulting in the killing of everyone in the car.

16/08/2012 #Syria *GRAPHIC*: Massacre in Mezzeh - Assad slaughters residents in a key Damascus neighborhood

16/08/2012 Maar Tamsreen, Idlib, #Syria *GRAPHIC*: Body parts littering the street

15/08/2012 Aleppo, #Syria: Heartbreaking tragedy for this woman in Azaz

15/08/2012 Azaz, Aleppo, #Syria: Syrian Airstrike Levels Neighborhood

Syrian fighter jets screamed through the sky dropping bombs over the rebel-held town of Marea, that leveled the better part of a neighborhood and wounded scores of people. Activists said more than 20 people were killed. (NOTE: Graphic material) (Aug. 15)

14/08/2012 Abtaa, Daraa, #Syria: Horanies digging new graves after a wave of killing for the burial of martyrs.

13/08/2012 Damascus, #Syria: Bara’a Yusef al-Bushi, a 24 year old from Hama graduated in 2010 with a degree in Journalism. Bara’a was doing his military service at the rank of Lt. when the revolution started. After his defection he became one of the best media activists working for the revolution, even appearing on Arab satellite channels like Al-Arabiya. Bara’a was killed on 11/08/2012 while covering the shelling of al-Tal in the suburbs of Damascus.

13/08/2012 Tafas, Daraa, #Syria: FSA Fighter Abdulrahman Mtawe’ just moments before he was killed

10/08/12

#Syria, The battalion Abu Bakr’s Brigade broke into the gas station Amiriya unification, which was located where the elements of al-Assad and the killing and wounding many of them left many