A group of 19 international organisations today called for the release of Zaitani, Gharir, and Darwish, and for the charges against all five to be dropped. If convicted, they face up to 15 years in prison. According to a statement released today, Syria’s Justice Minister earlier this month promised the release of SCM’s three jailed members — in addition to 69 other jailed activists.

SCM member Maha Assabalani, who was avoided being imprisoned during the raid, wrote about her colleagues for Index last year. She said that her colleagues are in prison for fighting for freedom of expression — and that they “risked their life fighting for real change.”  She also said that Darwish regularly told the organisation’s staff that “there are not enough prisons for the free word.”

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Renesys confirms loss of Syrian Internet connectivity 18:43 UTC.BGP routes down, inbound traces failing.@geeknik

— Renesys Corporation (@renesys) May 7, 2013

Syrian residents have confirmed that the internet is down to the BBC, but both landlines and mobile phones are still working.

Internet and mobile connectivity was shut down in November 2012.

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Burma

A Muslim woman, Win Win Sein, has been charged with “religious defamation”, after she accidentally knocked over the alms bowl of a Buddhist monk (AFP)

France
The video for “College Boy” by rock band Indochine has been banned from TV for its portrayal of bullying and the crucifiction and shooting of a schoolboy (Huffington Post France)

(Warning: video is graphic)

Turkmenistan
Government officials searched phones and cameras of spectators at a horse racing event in an attempt to suppress footage of President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov falling off his horse at the end of a race he “won” (The Times £)

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SYRIA

Kerry discussed the situation in Syria with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Berlin, and he will be meeting members of the Syrian National Council (SNC) at a US-organised conference in Rome. Initially, leaders of the opposition group threatened to boycott the meeting, but had a change of heart after Kerry made strong statements in London on Monday supporting the opposition group’s attempts to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Since the start of the country’s ongoing conflict, Syria has faced horrifying human rights violations — with a death toll of at least 60,000 — and journalists attempting to cover the country’s ongoing tragedy continue to be targeted. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has named Syria the “most dangerous country in the world for journalists”, with 32 journalists killed since the start of protests in March 2011. Only this week, French freelance photographer Olivier Voisin was killed in Syria’s Idlib province. Two journalists also died last month: French journalist Yves Debay and Syrian-born journalist Mohamed Al-Massalma.

EGYPT

Kerry’s next stop will be post-revolution Egypt, where freedom of expression faces many challenges under President Mohamed Morsi. The country’s new constitution passed in December raised some eyebrows with clauses related to blasphemy (amongst other things). Article 44 of the constitution forbids “defaming all religious messengers and prophets”. New Egypt has been no stranger to blasphemy charges: most recently, novelist Youssef Zeidan was this week accused of blasphemy by the Islamic Research Institute (which seeks for him to be charged under Article 77 of the Penal Code, which could mean a death sentence for the writer).

In further efforts to battle so-called blasphemy, Egypt has made a series of worrisome moves. Earlier this month, a Cairo court ordered a month-long ban on YouTube, since the video sharing site refused to remove the trailer for anti-Islam film the Innocence of Muslims. Since then, Egyptian authorities dropped the ban, since it would be far too costly to actually implement. The film sparked protests across the world last September last year, and following the controversy Egypt sentenced seven Coptic Christian filmmakers connected to the film to death in absentia. Alber Saber, a 27-year-old atheist, is currently appealing a three-year sentence handed to him for allegedly posting a link to the crude film’s trailer on his Facebook page.

In addition to insulting religion, individuals have also faced charges for allegedly insulting Morsi, and novelist Alaa el-Aswany told US-owned Voice of America that the country’s president has even restricted free speech more than his ousted predecessor. Egypt’s answer to the Daily Show’s Jon Stewart, Bassem Youssef, was charged in January with insulting President Morsi, but the investigation was eventually dropped by authorities. According to el-Aswany, ten writers have faced such accusations.

 SAUDI ARABIA

Freedom of expression isn’t a phrase that is likely to be associated with Saudi Arabia. The country came in at number eight on CPJ’s ranking of censored countries around the world. It crushed recent protests held by the country’s Shia population in the Eastern Province, and has  attempted to stop any coverage of it through blocking foreign coverage and arresting local journalists attempting to cover the unrest.  According to Human Rights Watch, hundreds of protesters have also been arrested, and 14 protesters have been killed by security forces. Dissent is not taken lightly in Saudi Arabia: human rights defender Muhammad Al-Bejadi was sentenced on 10 April last year to four years in prison as well as a five-year travel ban for multiple charges in connection to his work.

In the ultra-conservative kingdom, insulting religion also earns a harsh penalty. Saudi writer Turki Al-Hamad was arrested in January after making tweets critical of the politics of some Islamists last December. Al-Hamad’s novels have been banned in Saudi Arabia (and have earned him fatwas from the country’s clerics), as well as Kuwait and Bahrain. Columnist Hamza Kashgari was arrested last February for blasphemy — a charge that carries the death sentence — for controversial tweets he made in February about the Muslim prophet Muhammad. While Kashgari attempted to flee Saudi Arabia to Malaysia, he was extradited back to his native country, and is still in prison while waiting for a trial. It’s no surprise that Saudi Arabia has called for “global internet regulation” in the name of “public order” in the past.

TURKEY

In the past few months, Turkey has shown that it still has a long way to go when it comes to freedom of speech. Article 301 of Turkey’s constitution makes it illegal to insult “Turkey, the Turkish nation, or Turkish government institutions”.  Free speech organisation Turkish PEN is currently undergoing an investigation for “insulting the state” for issuing a statement against the arrest of pianist Fazil Say, who is currently facing charges for retweeting a statement deemed to be insulting towards religion.

The country also has a number of journalists and writers in prison. According to CPJ, Turkey has hit an all-time high of imprisoned journalists, with 49 in prison as of 1 December last year. Most of there are ethnic Kurds, charged under the country’s vague and problematic anti-terror laws.

UNITED ARAB EMIRATES

Despite a flourishing international reputation, the United Arab Emirates has performed poorly when it comes to freedom of expression. Most recently, the illusion of its commitment to academic freedom was shattered after the London School of Economics (LSE) cancelled a conference scheduled to be held this week in the country. The LSE cited the barring of academic Dr Kristian Coates Ulrichsen from the country as well as concerns over “restrictions imposed on the intellectual content of the event that threatened academic freedom” as the reasons for the cancellation of the conference, which was organised in coordination with the American University of Sharjah. The UAE boasts a number of foreign university campuses, including Michigan State University, New York University, the Sorbonne, and Middlesex University. Such restrictions only cast a shadow on the integrity of such partnerships.

In addition to restrictions on academic freedom, the UAE has been engaged in a crackdown on activists both off and online. On 12 November, the country’s leader, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahaya issued a decree making it possible to imprison anyone poking fun at the country’s leadership or any of its institutions online. The country has quickly restricted rights in the name of national security — and according to the Gulf Center for Human Rights (GCHR), 66 activists were arrested in March 2012. According to the country’s authorities, those arrested are tied to Islamic group al-Islah, and whom authorities claim were planning to overthrow the government. Last year, five political activists eventually known as the “UAE 5″ were in prison for eight months after being arrested in April 2011, for posting messages critical of government leaders and policies in a now-defunct online forum called UAE Hewar. Even though the activists were eventually pardoned, Dr Mohammed Al Roken, a human rights lawyer who worked on their case (amongst many others), is currently being held in solitary confinement.

QATAR

The tiny country is mostly known for being the home of news station Al Jazeera, which has been criticised for its lack of coverage of stories within Qatar. Most recently, Qatari poet Mohammed al-Ajami had a life sentence reduced to fifteen years this week. He was first handed a life sentence in December for insulting the country’s Emir Sheikh Hamad al-Thani late last year, for a poem he uploaded in 2011 supporting the revolutions within the Arab world — where he called the leaders of the region ”indiscriminate thieves”.

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About 70 foreign reporters and local citizen journalists died during the months of the revolution. The regime’s shells and tanks do not differentiate between one who holds the camera and the pen, the demonstrator who holds banners, or the child who holds his future in his small hands. Everyone, without exception, is a target of a destructive, insatiable machine. It does not distinguish between Syrians and non-Syrians, as long as they have the vocabulary of freedom and truth in their dictionary: Marie Colvin, Rémi Ochlik, Mazhar Tayyara, Basil Shehadeh, Rami al-Sayed, Anas Tersheh, Mika Yamamoto, Hassan Azhari and dozens of others. We often followed their reports and videos and spread their news, without paying attention to those behind the camera, handset or computer screen. It was only later that we realised they were always in the grip of death.

It is said that the shoes of Marie Colvin led to her death. She removed them upon entering the hall of the building that was used as a revolutionary media centre in the area. When the shelling began, Marie rushed to retrieve her shoes in order to flee with the others, but the shell did not wait. She and her colleague, Rémi, and others were killed. It seems a shameful, humiliating fact, yet also demonstrates, Anna, the reality of a country where practicing any form of life, with the daily, trivial minutiae that make us ordinary human beings, has become impossible. The number of martyrs is over thirty thousand, including about 2,650 children and more than 1,700 women. We are working hard to collect their photos and curiously intervene in the details of their lost lives, desperately trying to keep mementos of their existence. This is a fraction of our duty toward them, but is also an important part of resisting death,carried out by us, the living.

There is not a stone left unturned in my country — the government army’s relentless destruction has made sure of that. Normally, we hear the roar of a plane, and after a few seconds, we hear the sound of shelling. We wait a little bit to start counting the martyrs and watch a video showing that what was once a building with floors, apartments, furniture, child beds, family pictures and toys has become a pile of dust and stones. Ancient neighbourhoods and markets, that store our memories and are part of our history, and lanes, a womb of our memories, were burned to the ground and our hearts burned with them.

Maybe I do not have the right to complain, Anna. You paid with your life for what you believed in. Marie, who we honor today in your name, paid the same price. As did your friend and the first recipient of the award, Natalia Estemirova, in Chechnya. However, I just cannot fathom the dull stupidity of the world, of governments and regimes east and west! I feel there is no difference between your government, which was responsible for your death, Anna, through shameful standing with a criminal and murderous regime, and the governments that condemned your killing, as they have condemned the killing of thousands of my people. They do not find an “incentive”, a sufficient interest, to defend human lives by more than a few trite words. Words are yours alone, Anna, you and Marie Colvin, Rami al-Sayed, Jel Jakiye, Abdul Aziz al-Sheikh, Mohammed Badie al-Kasem, and all the others who gave a new meaning to words and images, with a lot of love and determination.

Finally, let me, in your name, Anna Politkovskaya, honour your courageous colleague, Marie Colvin. I would like also to honor everyone carrying the obsession of freedom and truth in their heart; in Syria, which is tired and sad but determined to realise freedom; in occupied Palestine; in Chechnya; in Darfur; in Afghanistan; in the countries of the Arab Spring; in states where people do not have a chance of resurrection; in Iran, where the people aspire to be liberated from tyranny; and in every corner of this world, where people are still suffering to live in freedom and dignity.

Razan Zaitouneh is a Syrian human rights lawyer

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A little more than a year ago, the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) — a loosely-knit band of hackers — emerged, quickly gaining the support of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad who, in a speech, called the SEA a “virtual army in cyberspace.”  The “army” has continued its activities, hacking websites and spamming Facebook pages in an effort to win the information war.

But other methods have emerged from the pro-regime camp that make the SEA’s efforts look like child’s play.  For months, academic and rights groups have been documenting efforts by pro-regime hackers to distribute malware that installs surveillance tools on the recipient’s computer.  A recent example documented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation distributes malware via Skype; once a recipient’s machine is infected, their Skype account then sends a link out to contacts which, when clicked, installs the malware on their machines as well.

In an earlier incident, pro-government hackers set up a fake version of YouTube that attacked users in two different ways: first by requiring them to enter their YouTube login credentials, compromising their account; and second, by installing malware disguised as an Adobe Flash Player update.

This spate of attacks has left many Syrians seeking resources on how to stay safe online.  A number of organisations — the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Committee to Protect Journalists, to name just a couple — offer such information.

The regime continues to target journalists and citizen journalists (many of whom are staunchly in the opposition camp).  Just a few months ago, the offices of the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression were raided, its staff arrested.  Only some have since been freed.  More devastating was the recent loss of a young determined activist and Fulbright scholar, Bassel Shehade, who had spent much of the previous year using his skills to train other activists on using cameras to document human rights abuses.

The cumulative effect of all these efforts against activists has not, fortunately, been silence.  Bloggers continue to blog, activists continue to upload YouTube videos and post to Twitter, and many do so using their real names. Humour — often a relief in the darkest times —has lent itself to campaigns, with powerful images dominating the Facebook groups of the Syrian revolution.

Nevertheless, the information war continues, with opposition factions, regime supporters, and even the regime itself vying for the role of truth bearer. Seeking truth through the chaos is difficult enough when framed through the lens of traditional media, but becomes far complex when contending with thousands of voices on social media, as well as sockpuppets and paid trolls.

Though it is important to remember that the Syrian conflict is primarily an offline one, and not lose sight of the limitations of the internet for political change, it is nonetheless clear that the internet plays an important role in allowing Syrians to communicate with the world.

Jillian C. York is Director for International Freedom of Expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. She tweets at @jilliancyork

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