Syrian mother and daughter journalists murdered in Istanbul

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Syrian journalists Orouba Barakat and her daughter Halla Barakat were found murdered in Istanbul. (Facebook)

Syrian journalists Orouba Barakat and her daughter Halla Barakat were found murdered in Istanbul. (Facebook)

The bodies of Syrian journalists Orouba Barakat and her daughter Halla Barakat were discovered in their apartment in Istanbul late Thursday 22 September, 2017.

Friends who failed to reach Halla Barakat by phone called the police, who had a locksmith open the apartment located on Yangaç Street in the Üsküdar neighbourhood.

According to police reports, the Barakats were strangled and then stabbed. The perpetrators also poured detergent powder on the bodies to minimise the smell of the decomposing bodies.

“The brutal killing of Orouba and Halla is a tragedy for press freedom.” Hannah Machlin, project manager, Mapping Media Freedom, said. “As we mourn the loss of two brave journalists, we call on the authorities to swiftly investigate and identify those responsible for this heinous crime.”  

Orouba Barakat was a journalist, filmmaker and activist who was an outspoken critic of the Assad regime and a staunch supporter of the revolution. She had exposed countless atrocities of the Assad regime in prisons.

Her daughter Halla (22) was a reporter for Alekhbarya TV, news editor for the Orient and former editor at Turkish state channel TRT world.

Both Barakat and her daughter had been reportedly receiving threats from groups associated with the Bashar Assad government.

Orouba Barakat was forced to spend most of her life in exile. She fled her native Syria in the 1980s. She resided in the UAE before moving to Istanbul.

The police are still investigating the murder. The date of the murder is not yet known.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_separator][vc_custom_heading text=”Media freedom is under threat worldwide. Journalists are threatened, jailed and even killed simply for doing their job.” font_container=”tag:h3|text_align:left” use_theme_fonts=”yes” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.indexoncensorship.org%2Fcampaigns%2Fpress-regulation%2F|||”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship monitors media freedom in Turkey and 41 other European area nations.

As of 22/9/2017, there were 525 verified violations of press freedom associated with Turkey in the Mapping Media Freedom database.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship campaigns against laws that stifle journalists’ work. We also publish an award-winning magazine featuring work by and about censored journalists. Support our work today.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”12″ style=”load-more” items_per_page=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1506088588004-59d922a2-300c-5″ taxonomies=”55″][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Bassel Khartabil: “I urge you to support nonviolent activism”

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”95161″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center”][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_video link=”https://youtu.be/GUWv8_bOXgg”][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_column_text]2013 Freedom of Expression Digital Activism Award-winning Bassel Khartabil, a Syrian-born Palestinian digital activist, worked to build a career in software and web development. Before his arrest in 2012, he used his technical expertise to help advance freedom of speech and access to information in Syria via the internet. His execution by the Syrian government in 2015 was announced by his wife, Noura Ghazi Safadi, on Tuesday 1 August 2017.

The following speech was delivered at the 2013 Freedom of Expression Awards by his friend and colleague Dana Trometer.

Dear Prize Jury Committee Members, Dear Madams and Sirs,

I would like to thank you for this award. I am truly honoured to receive it.

I hope, this great honour, that I receive while I am still in prison for participating in the Syrian Revolution that has been going two years, will shed a light on the nonviolent sides of this popular movement that has claimed the lives of many young Syrian men and women.

Many are those who have lost their possessions, faced imprisonment or sacrificed their souls for freedom in Syria. Those, especially nonviolent activists, who refused to carry arms, deserve all the credit and respect.

Therefore in my name and the name of my wife, I dedicate this award to them, and to all those who are helping me win my freedom back.

I would like to thank you again for your support and for your generosity and I hope I will be able to meet you in person next year, and I urge you to support nonviolent activism and to continue to provide nonviolent movements with the essential technical support in Syria and around the world.

Bassel Khartabil Al Safadi

In prison when he received the 2013 Freedom of Expression Digital Activism Award, Bassel Khartabil wrote his speech to be delivered by a colleague in the UK.

In prison when he received the 2013 Freedom of Expression Digital Activism Award, Bassel Khartabil wrote his speech to be delivered by a colleague in the UK.

 

Bassel Khartabil, winner of the 2013 Freedom of Expression Digital Activism Award, was in prison when he won the award. His friends accepted the award on his behalf. From left: Jon Phillips, Dana Trometer and then-chair of Index on Censorship Jonathan Dimbleby.

Bassel Khartabil, winner of the 2013 Freedom of Expression Digital Activism Award, was in prison when he won the award. His friends accepted the award on his behalf. From left: Jon Phillips, Dana Trometer and then-chair of Index on Censorship Jonathan Dimbleby.

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Honouring Bassel Khartabil, Syrian digital activist

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2013 Freedom of Expression Digital Activism Award-winning Bassel Khartabil.

2013 Freedom of Expression Digital Activism Award-winning Bassel Khartabil.

Index on Censorship mourns the death of 2013 Freedom of Expression Digital Activism Award-winning Bassel Khartabil, who had been held Syrian prisons since 2012. His execution by the Syrian government was announced by his wife, Noura Ghazi Safadi, on Tuesday 1 August 2017.

“Bassel was a true inspiration and hero for us all. Index joins with outraged members of the international community to mourn the death of Bassel, who lived and died for his belief in freedom of speech, transparency and a free internet. We extend our deepest condolences to his family,” Melody Patry, head of advocacy, Index on Censorship said.

A Syrian-born Palestinian digital activist, Khartabil (aka Bassel Safadi) worked to build a career in software and web development. Before his arrest, he used his technical expertise to help advance freedom of speech and access to information via the internet. Among other projects, he founded Creative Commons Syria, a non-profit organisation that enables people to share artistic and other work using free legal tools. Khartabil’s digital work is still advancing knowledge: colleagues produced a 3D model of the ancient Palmyra ruins destroyed by Isis using data collected by Khartabil before his detention.

In 2010, Khartabil started Syria’s first hackerspace, Aiki Lab, in Damascus. It was a base from which he helped advance the open source movement in Syria. Khartabil is also known for his work on free culture projects such as Mozilla Firefox, and was an avid contributor and editor to Wikipedia. Prior to his arrest, he was working on software to enable the free flow of information in a country where online communications and networks were closely monitored by the government.

Because of his efforts using technology to promote an open and free internet — especially in Syria, where online censorship is rife — Khartabil won the 2013 Index on Censorship Digital Freedom Award. In 2012, Foreign Policy magazine named him as one of the top 100 global thinkers. In 2015, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology offered him a research scientist position in the Media Lab’s Center for Civic Media. 

Detention and death sentence

Syria’s military intelligence illegally detained Khartabil on March 15, 2012. He was held incommunicado in detention for eight months and was subjected to torture and other ill-treatment. He faced military field court proceedings for his peaceful activities in support of freedom of expression. A military judge interrogated Khartabil for a few minutes on December 9, 2012, but he had heard nothing further about his legal case, he told his family later. In December 2012 he was moved to ‘Adra prison in Damascus, where he remained until October 3, 2015, when he was transferred to an undisclosed location. On 12 November 2015, Khartabil’s wife, Noura Ghazi Safadi, reported rumours that her husband had been sentenced to death by the military courts, although the Assad regime never confirmed or denied the reports. 

According to anonymous sources, Khartabil’s wife was told that after his disappearance he was tried by a military field court in the military police headquarters in al-Qaboun, which sentenced him to death. Military field courts in Syria are exceptional courts with secret, closed-door proceedings that do not meet international fair trial standards. Defendants have no legal representation, and the courts’ decisions are binding and not subject to appeal. People brought before such courts who were later released have said that proceedings are perfunctory, often lasting only minutes.

Throughout his detention, many human rights groups have campaigned for his release. On 21 April 2015, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention declared his detention a violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and called for his release.

Bassel Khartabil, winner of the 2013 Freedom of Expression Digital Activism Award, was in prison when he won the award. His friends accepted the award on his behalf. From right: Jon Phillips, Dana Trometer and then-chair of Index on Censorship board of trustees Jonathan Dimbleby.

Bassel Khartabil, winner of the 2013 Freedom of Expression Digital Activism Award, was in prison when he won the award. His friends accepted the award on his behalf. From left: Jon Phillips, Dana Trometer and then-chair of Index on Censorship Jonathan Dimbleby.

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Lindsey Hilsum: The danger of reporting behind the lines

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Writing in the summer 2016 issue award-winning journalist LINDSEY HILSUM asked if reporters should still be heading to warzones.” google_fonts=”font_family:Libre%20Baskerville%3Aregular%2Citalic%2C700|font_style:400%20italic%3A400%3Aitalic”][vc_single_image image=”76650″ img_size=”large” alignment=”center”][vc_column_text]

THE SUNDAY TIMES war correspondent Marie Colvin used to say that she felt like the last reporter in the YouTube world.

I understand what she meant: old-fashioned journalists like us put a premium on being there, rather than sitting in a newsroom piecing together bits of footage uploaded by activists and journalists more daring or foolish than ourselves. Yet we have to acknowledge the power as well as the limitations of this new kind of reporting.

At Channel 4 News we employ a Lebanese journalist who is a specialist in sourcing video. He knows who uploads the pictures of barrel bomb damage, who destroyed hospitals in Aleppo, who to Skype for a reliable account. Marie might have sniffed, but it’s become an integral part of our coverage – in early May the inmates of Hama prison were filming with their mobile phones and sending out pictures even as government forces tear-gassed them.

It was compelling television, yet left many questions unanswered. The Hama prisoners showed the army about to attack, but not the guards they had themselves taken hostage. We knew their demands, but little of the background – and we weren’t there to probe further.

As Western media organisations cut costs by slashing foreign bureaux, and succumb to pressure constantly to update online, the temptation is to pull it all together in London or Paris or New York rather than venturing out. Danger forms another part of the calculation. Kidnap and beheading is the most extreme form of censorship. In Syria, US photojournalist James Foley was murdered in 2014, several European journalists were later kidnapped and ransomed and the British photographer John Cantlie is still held by IS.

Yet, whatever the risks, in the end being an eyewitness will always be the most honest form of journalism. It is still essential. In Rwanda, in 1994, I watched as the genocide unfolded around me. I reported what I saw: the drunken red-eyed men with machetes at the roadblocks, the blood running in the gutters. And what I heard: Rwandans calling me up to describe how the murderous gangs were banging on their doors and breaking through their windows. There was no substitute for being there.

More recently, travelling on a Syrian government visa, I was among the first journalists to visit the ancient city of Palmyra after regime forces took it back from IS. Beyond the normal journalistic enthusiasm to get to where the story was happening, I feared being used for propaganda. But in fact we were able to move reasonably freely. I could see – and the cameraman could film – the destruction that IS had wrought on the ancient city, and the parallel devastation that government and Russian forces had wrought on the adjacent, modern town of Tadmur. We even managed to film government troops looting people’s houses. None of this could we have seen or understood if we had reported long-distance.

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Support Index’s work.

We monitor threats to press freedom, produce an award-winning magazine and publish work by censored writers.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″ css=”.vc_custom_1489513352356{background-image: url(https://www.indexoncensorship.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/newspapers.jpg?id=50885) !important;background-position: center !important;background-repeat: no-repeat !important;background-size: cover !important;}”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]

In a speech at London’s St Bride’s Church, often a hub for journalists, in 2010, Marie said: “We always have to ask ourselves whether the level of risk is worth the story. What is bravery, and what is bravado?”

That is a difficult question. Few mainstream news organisations are willing to let their journalists cross the border from Turkey into Syria these days, because the risk of kidnap is so great. Most editors now understand that they should not buy material from freelancers in places where they would not send their own staff because of the danger.

It’s progress – there was a time when broadcasters and newspapers routinely used freelancers without taking any responsibility for their safety. But it means we are left with the information from prisoners in Hama and citizen journalist reports from Aleppo – better than nothing, filmed by brave people, but frequently incomplete, often confusing, biased, not always easy to interpret.

In February 2012, Marie and photographer Paul Conroy crawled through a sewer to get to Homs, as the Syrian regime’s bombs turned the buildings of rebel-controlled Baba Amr to burnt-out carcasses and rubble. In her dispatches, Marie described the makeshift beds on which children slept underground to avoid the bombs, the operations without anaesthetic, the despair of people who felt they had been abandoned by the world. It was classic, old-fashioned eyewitness reporting.

On 22 February, a government mortar shell killed Marie and the French photographer, Rémi Ochlik. Conroy and the French reporter Edith Bouvier were seriously injured.

Marie felt she had a responsibility to report; she refused to leave it to YouTube. Yet, on this occasion, the risk was too great. Was she brave, or – in her own words – was it bravado? Either way, we are all the poorer because Marie Colvin is no longer reporting from Syria.

Lindsey Hilsum is international editor for Channel 4 News. She is currently writing a biography of Marie Colvin

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]This article appeared in the summer 2016 issue of Index on Censorship magazine.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”From the Archives”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”80560″ img_size=”213×289″ alignment=”center” onclick=”custom_link” link=”http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0306422014526122″][vc_custom_heading text=”Dispatches from the frontlines” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:24|text_align:left” link=”url:http%3A%2F%2Fjournals.sagepub.com%2Fdoi%2Fpdf%2F10.1177%2F0306422014526122|||”][vc_column_text]March 2014

Seasoned foreign correspondent Lyse Doucet discusses war reporting and how it and journalists have changed in the past 25 years.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”80561″ img_size=”213×289″ alignment=”center” onclick=”custom_link” link=”http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0306422014535688″][vc_custom_heading text=”Syria’s inside track: citizens” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:24|text_align:left” link=”url:http%3A%2F%2Fjournals.sagepub.com%2Fdoi%2Fpdf%2F10.1177%2F0306422014535688|||”][vc_column_text]June 2014

Vicky Baker reports on an ambitious project to chart and verify Syria’s countrywide citizen reports, social media updates and news articles.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”92004″ img_size=”213×289″ alignment=”center” onclick=”custom_link” link=”http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03064228908534569″][vc_custom_heading text=”Reporting the Sudan” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:24|text_align:left” link=”url:http%3A%2F%2Fjournals.sagepub.com%2Fdoi%2Fpdf%2F10.1080%2F03064228908534569|||”][vc_column_text]January 1987

Accused of exaggerating’ religious conflict in war-torn Sudan, foreign journalists are frequently barred from entering the country at all.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_custom_heading text=”Danger in truth: truth in danger” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:24|text_align:left” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.indexoncensorship.org%2F2016%2F05%2Fdanger-in-truth-truth-in-danger%2F|||”][vc_column_text]The summer 2016 issue of Index on Censorship magazine looks at why journalists around the world face increasing threats.

In the issue: articles by journalists Lindsey Hilsum and Jean-Paul Marthoz plus Stephen Grey. Special report on dangerous journalism, China’s most famous political cartoonist and the late Henning Mankell on colonialism in Africa.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”80569″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”center” onclick=”custom_link” link=”https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2016/05/danger-in-truth-truth-in-danger/”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_custom_heading text=”Subscribe” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:24|text_align:left” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.indexoncensorship.org%2Fsubscribe%2F|||”][vc_column_text]In print, online. In your mailbox, on your iPad.

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