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Journalist gaoled, beaten by Syrian authorities offers advice to others

Khaled Sid Mohand was arrested, beaten and locked in a gaol cell for a week before his captors presented what he dreaded: his notes.

With the screams of other prisoners echoing around him, the journalist feared that his Syrian interrogators would force him to divulge the identities of sources contained in notes that security forces had seized when he was arrested as anti-government demonstrations spread this spring.

“I was really, really concerned about that [the captured papers] while I was in gaol,” Mohand recalls. “There was only one, one person who could identify these people—it was me.”

Poster featuring Syrian president Bashar al-Assad in Damascus, Syria.
Photo: Watchsmart via Flickr, some rights reserved

A few days after he was arrested as he sat at a Damascus café the afternoon of 9 April, security agents asked about his notes and sources.

“So of course I lied. I lied for all these people,” Mohand, 40, said in a telephone interview from Paris. “I don’t know if they [the police] knew I was lying, but they didn’t have any other means to make me talk—but they tried.”

Mohand, an Algerian who lived in Damascus and freelanced for French media, was held for 23 days. He was among the few foreign journalists working in the country as protests erupted in March. Others left or were expelled as the security crackdown widened.

Those who still work in the country are cautious. Reuters on 23 June released a report by a correspondent the news agency says spent several weeks in Damascus, but withheld the reporter’s byline “to protect the writer and those interviewed for the story.” The dispatch reported on the unseemly tranquility of Damascus as protests continued elsewhere in the country.

Most news organisations are forced to cover Syria using stringers or correspondents based in neighbouring countries. They rely heavily on social media for information and descriptions of what is happening on the street.

Mohand says social media are playing a more significant role in Syria than in the springtime revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, where foreign reporters and photojournalists were on the ground. In Syria, “these social networks have a huge importance to get the information out of the country and to allow people to express themselves, and to figure out what is happening there.”

‘War on the Web’

Syrian security forces were swift to recognise the role of Facebook, Twitter and text messaging, launching counter-offensives aimed at discrediting anti-government protesters and using Internet platforms to promote President Bashar al-Assad. The regime cut off telecommunications and in some cases electricity to impede Internet access, although dissidents reportedly are using phone and Internet signals from neighbouring countries to circumvent the authorities.

“It’s a major war and the war is taking place on the Web as well,” Mohand says of Syria.

“The whole situation is very, very confused and there are so many manipulations from one side, and so many efforts from the other side to … bring out the information.”

The Syrian rebellion began not on the Internet, but among mostly working people who were growing restive over corruption, abuse of power and soaring inflation. With unauthorised public rallies long banned in Syria, dissent began in the mosques—one of the few places where people could gather.

The first protests took place in towns outside the capital, including Banias, Deir Ezzor, Deraa and Homs.

As protests spread, younger, educated dissidents were “pretty much disconnected from the demonstrations,” Mohand recalls. “Then they eventually found their place in the movement by playing the role of cyber-activists, by being the interface of all these people gathering in all the suburbs of Damascus and outside of Damascus ... being the interface of all these demonstrators coming from the working class, and the human rights NGOs and the foreign media.”

Meanwhile, the crackdown grew more forceful. During his 23 days in seclusion at a Damascus security prison, Mohand says there were fresh arrivals every day, many beaten or tortured. An account of his gaol ordeal was published on 29 May by the Paris daily Le Monde.

Mohand says he was beaten the first couple of days, but that stopped, perhaps due to pressure from the Algerian and French governments, which were demanding his release. He recounts that he was first asked his notes a week after being arrested, but fabricated details about sources to protect them. Mohand had already erased contacts from his computer, which the police seized along with his notebooks.

According to the New York-based Committee to Project Journalists, some 20 local and foreign correspondents were attacked, detained or deported from Syria as the spring uprisings unfolded. Al-Jazeera reporter Dorothy Parvaz was seized by Syrian police, who at first accused her of being an Israeli spy, and was later sent to Iran where she was also incarcerated before being released on 18 May after 19 days in detention.

The Assad regime has long repressed independent media and has sought to limit the influence of Internet, for example, by requiring owners of Internet cafés to record the names of customers. The government has arrested bloggers and other dissenters, and in 2009, security forces shut down one of the few independent advocacy organisations, the Syrian Centre for Media and Freedom of Expression.

Catch-22 for journalists

Today’s information vacuum is compounded by sources who are afraid to speak for fear of reprisal, as well as government manipulation. Disclosures that a blog on the life of a young Syrian lesbian was a fraud carried out by a 40-year-old American man lends implausibility to some information coming out of the country.

Mohand says it is not easy to give advice on how to report on Syria from the outside, with journalists having to count on a mishmash of blogs, Twitter and Facebook feeds, and unsourced video and images.

It’s a Catch-22 situation for journalists.

“The advice I could give is contradictory. One would be to follow your intuition, and the second is to be careful of your intuition,” Mohand says.

“In this kind of situation you have to be very careful, but if you are too careful you can’t do anything. You can’t go out of your house, you can’t call anybody, you can’t meet anybody so the whole situation is very dangerous, for you as the journalist and for the people. You have to be very, very, very careful not to reveal your sources.”

 

Tags: detention, information vacuum, internet, jail, journalists, khaled sid mohand, protests, sources, syria,

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