Set Syria’s Razan free

Razan Zaitouneh

With the Christmas and New Year holiday season just a week away, it is a time for families to be united. Not so, however, for the thousands of prisoners of conscience who have been languishing in Syria’s jails.

The latest are four Syrian activists abducted in the Damascus suburbs for their human rights and humanitarian work.

They must be released immediately and unconditionally, said a statement released last week by no less than 16 human rights organizations. The statement was carried by Reporters Without Borders.

Award-winning Syrian human rights defender and writer Razan Zaitouneh, her husband, Wa’el Hamada, and two colleagues, Nazem Hamadi and Samira Khalil, were abducted by unknown individuals on 9 December 2013.

They were snatched from a joint office for the Violations Documentation Center (VDC) and the Local Development and Small Projects Support (LDSPS) in the Damascus suburb of Douma.

Douma is part of Eastern Ghouta -- an area under the control of a number of armed opposition groups that is being besieged by Syrian government forces.

In a joint statement issued on 10 December 2013, the VDC and the LDSPS attributed Razan Zaitouneh’s abduction to her activities as a founding member of these organizations.

The VDC is an independent non-governmental organization that has been mainly documenting human rights abuses committed by the Syrian government in the context of the conflict.

The LDSPS provides humanitarian assistance, particularly to medical centers in areas like Eastern Ghouta.

Like many other human rights activists perceived by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government to be involved in pro-reform protests, Ms Zaitouneh was forced into hiding in 2011 after receiving threats from the Syrian authorities. In the last few months, she received threats from at least one armed opposition group in the Eastern Ghouta area.

The statement said civil society activists, writers, journalists and lawyers have borne a heavy price during the ongoing war in Syria, falling victim to unlawful killings, enforced disappearances, arbitrary detention and torture and other ill-treatment at the hands of government security forces and, more recently, becoming targets for armed opposition groups that disapprove of their endeavors.

______________________________________________________

Journalists as a Syria war casualty – 10 December 2013

______________________________________________________

All parties to the conflict should adhere to their obligations under international humanitarian law, which prohibits the abduction of civilians, hostage taking and torture, it concluded.

The co-signing organizations in alphabetical order are:

1. Alkarama Foundation

2. Amnesty International

3. Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS)

4. Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network

5. Gulf Center for Human Rights

6. Humanist Institute for Cooperation with Developing Countries (Hivos)

7. Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR)

8. International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN)

9. International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) -- in the framework of the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders

10. International Media Support (IMS)

11. Lawyers for Lawyers

12. PEN International

13. Reporters Without Borders

14. SKeyes Center for Media and Cultural Freedom

15. Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression (SCM)

16. World Organization Against Torture (OMCT) - in the framework of the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders

Human rights defender

Ms Zaitouneh was last November awarded the 2012 Ibn Rushd Award for Freedom of Thought by the Ibn Rushd Fund for Freedom of Thought.

The Ibn Rushd Fund has since 1998 been recognizing people who have sought to stimulate change with their thoughts and who have suffered the consequences of imprisonment and torture. It recognizes those who broke new ground for many others and who are fighting for freedom.

Ms Zaitouneh committed to the struggle for the rights of political prisoners in 2001 and co-founded a society for human rights in Syria. 

She has been reporting on the violation of human rights since 2005 on Syrian Human Rights Information Link, a database for human right violations committed by the Syrian regime.

The 36-year-old activist supports families of political prisoners.

In April 2011, she also co-founded the local coordinating committee of the revolution in Syria. 

Since the outbreak of the war in Syria in March 2011, Ms Zaitouneh was forced to go into hiding.

In May 2011, Air Force Intelligence broke into her house in Damascus. Many of her documents and personal belongings were seized.

Additionally, her brother-in-law, Aburrahman Hamada, who was just visiting, was taken hostage in exchange for the fugitive couple.  Air Force Intelligence then arrested Razan’s husband, Wa’el Hamada. The brothers spent three months in solitary confinement before they were released. 

Since 2004, Ms Zaitouneh has published dozens of articles and reports in the press and on the Internet about the human rights situation and the freedom of speech in Syria.

Ms Zaitouneh was recently the recipient of the 2013 International Women of Courage Award.

She received the European Parliament’s Anna Politkovskaya Prize for the defense of human rights and the 2011 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought -- together with renowned Syrian cartoonist Ali Ferzat.

______________________________________________________

Ali Ferzat: Cartoonist for Freedom – 11 December 2011

Two Syrian roaming roses honored – 11 October 2012

______________________________________________________

The Ibn Rushd Fund says Razan’s commitment to human rights and her non-violent opposition make her a true representative of a young generation that is prepared to risk personal freedom, security and even life for social change.

She is also representative of women in the Arab Spring, who -- especially in Syria -- are often at the forefront of the struggle for freedom and democracy but ignored by most Western media.

Will Ms Zaitouneh, her husband and colleagues be reunited with their families for the holiday season? My thoughts and prayers are with them and their families and the thousands of others who are still behind bars.

Journalists as a Syria war casualty

As the Syria war enters its 1,000th day and Syria is labeled “the world’s most dangerous country for journalists,” Syrian media have united for the first time to demand an end to the crimes and abuses committed against all journalists and media workers in their country.

They issued a statement jointly signed by Syrian media, Syrian NGOs, leading international NGOs and high profile personalities.

The statement says:

On October 1, forces from the armed group the “Islamic State of Iraq and Syria” (ISIS) raided Radio Ana offices in Raqqah.

On October 15, they raided the office a second time, taking possession of all radio and communications equipment.

This example of abuses against the press shall not remain unnoticed, nor should it be considered as an isolated case. The “Islamic State of Iraq and Syria” (ISIS) is targeting the newborn independent Syrian press in a deliberate strategy to crush press freedom and to impose a renewed and constant censorship upon the Syrian people.

We, the undersigned,

Refuse any form of intimidation against journalists, citizen journalists, media activists or media organizations, by any group, in any context, and under any pretext.

Press freedom and freedom of expression are inalienable and universal human rights. Any abuse against these universal rights must be condemned and opposed.

We call on the whole Syrian civil society, its political institutions and its media groups to take relevant action to expose these practices, to oppose them, and to protect the media from these dangers.

We demand the immediate release of all detained journalists and citizen journalists held by the regime, ISIS or any other group.

Additionally, we call on international media and those organizations in support of press freedom to join this initiative and to take relevant action for the safety of journalists and freedom of speech in Syria.

Signed by: Ibrahim al-Jabin, Syrian writer; Aktham Naisse, director of Sham Center for Democratic Studies and Human Rights; Burhan Ghallioun, Syrian politician; Bassam Ishak, member of the Syrian National Council; Rasha Omran, writer and poet; Salameh Kaileh, writer; Suheir al-Attasi, political activist; Subhi Hadidi, literary critic; Ammar al-Qurabi, Syrian politician; Ghassan Mouflih, member of the Syrian National Council; Faraj Berakdar, poet; Mohamad Dughmosh, journalist and Al-Arabiya reporter; Hadi al-Bahra, Syrian politician; Mouaz al-Khatib, mosque preacher and Syrian politician; Molham al- Drobi, member of the Muslim Brotherhood; Nouri al-Jarrah, poet; Robin Yassin-Kassab, writer; U.S. Ambassador Robert Ford; Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas; Guy Verhofstadt, leader of the Liberal Democrats (European Parliament); Koert Debeuf, European Parliament.

You can also add your signature here.

Impossible job?

In a November 6 report, Reporters Without Borders says Syria is now “the world’s most dangerous country for journalists.”

More than 110 news providers have been killed in the course of their work there since March 2011 and more than 60 are currently detained, held hostage or missing.

Reporters Without Borders released the report -- Journalism in Syria, impossible job? -- as Edouard Elias and Didier François, two French TV journalists who were abducted on June 6, began their sixth month in captivity in Syria. Two other French journalists, Nicolas Hénin and Pierre Torres, have been held hostage for five-and-a-half months.

It examines the growing perils of journalism in Syria. It also analyzes the evolution in the dangers and identifies the origins of the threats and difficulties Syrian and foreign news providers have encountered during the 33 months of the conflict.

At the start of the uprising, the Syrian army and its civilian thugs retaliated against journalists covering the anti-Assad protests and the government’s crackdown. Now, the report notes, Syrian and foreign journalists are targeted not only by the regular army but also by Jihadist groups in the “liberated areas” in the north, and by the security forces of the PYD, the main political force in the regions with a mainly Kurdish population.

Bashar al-Assad was Syria’s only representative on the Reporters Without Borders annual list of “Predators of press freedom” in 2011. But Jabhat al-­Nusra was added to the list in 2013 and now, Reporters Without Borders says other Jihadist groups, such as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), deserve to be included.

Aside from the human toll, the report also shows that news coverage is one of the war’s collateral victims. The regime uses the state media in a propaganda and disinformation war, while the new media that quickly emerged after the start of the conflict have tended to turn into puppets of the “revolution” even if some of them strive to be professional.

Syria regime now burning bloggers!

The late Abdelkareem al-Oqda

Syrian blogger and citizen journalist Abdelkareem al-Oqda, also known as Abu Hassan and Karmo, is yet another victim of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s war on truth, freedom and the Syrian people.

Oqda and three friends were killed and their bodies set alight in the Hama Province last Wednesday (September 19).

The 27-year-old was known as one of the bravest reporters for Shaam News Network.

SNN's Facebook page

SNN says Oqda never feared for his life when reporting in the most dangerous of situations. He always told his friends it was more important the world be shown the truth about happenings in Syria, now in the 18^th month of a bloody revolution.

Oqda had uploaded on YouTube 1,252 videos exposing atrocities committed by the regime against citizens in the Hama Province,

Abu Hassan: "I will film until my last breath"

In one of the videos, Oqba explains why he left his job as a construction worker to take up filming. "I want to expose the crimes carried out by the regime... I will film until my last breath," he said.

His fellow-reporters often heard him saying, “God, let me die for the sake of truth and justice.” His wish has sadly been granted.

SNN has posted thousands of videos documenting the unrest in Syria since it was founded in February 2011, about a month before the outbreak of the revolution in mid-March last year. International news organizations use the network’s footage regularly.

The UK-based watchdog Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says an army attack on the Arba’een district of Hama -- one of the main arenas of Syria's anti-regime uprising -- left 16 people dead on the same day.

Oqda, killed and burned with his friends Nidal and Hamzah Bakour and Basel Kannan 

SNN says Oqda was at his home in Arba’een on Wednesday morning with friends Nidal and Hamzah Bakour and Basel Kannan. They were preparing to go filming when Assad forces ambushed the home, killed the four and then torched the house and their bodies.

Abu Hassan leaves behind a wife and brother, both of whom are currently detained by the Assad regime. His brother has been held since the summer of 2010.

Both Oqda’s home and his brother’s had been gutted by Assad forces once before. His sister’s children were stabbed to death in a massacre perpetrated by regime forces in rural Hama some months ago, according to SNN.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemned the brutal attack and called on all sides to stop targeting journalists.

"We condemn this brutal targeting and murder of Abdelkareem al-Oqda," said CPJ Deputy Director Robert Mahoney. "Journalists are civilians, and the army must know that it will be held accountable for its actions against reporters."

At least 21 journalists have been killed covering the Syrian revolution since November, including one killed just over the border in Lebanon, making Syria the most dangerous place in the world for journalists, according to CPJ research.

CPJ has documented resurgence in dangers facing the press in Syria over the past five weeks, including the disappearance of three foreign journalists.

Turkish cameraman Cüneyt Ünal and reporter Bashar Fahmi, a Jordanian citizen of Palestinian origin, who work for the U.S. government-funded Al-Hurra TV news channel, were reported missing in the northwestern city of Aleppo on August 20. Six days later, Ünal appeared in a video saying he had been taken captive while reporting in Syria, but did not explicitly name his captors. But the video appeared on a pro-government television channel. The cameraman made no mention of Fahmi. No further information is known about the journalists' whereabouts or condition.

CPJ adds that U.S. freelance journalist Austin Tice has not been heard from for over a month. At the end of August, the Czech ambassador who represents U.S. interests in Syria said the government had detained Tice, but Syrian authorities refused to confirm they were holding him, according to news reports.

"We call on the captors of Cüneyt Ünal, Bashar Fahmi, and Austin Tice to release them," said CPJ's Mahoney.

The Paris-based press watchdog, Reporters Without Borders (RSF), said: "Syria's cities have become a 'Bermuda Triangle' for journalists."

As a blogger, believer in free speech and humanitarian, I mourn the killing of Abdelkareem al-Oqda. May he rest in peace.

More here:

Oqda’s YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/hama4free

Oqda’s FaceBook page: https://www.facebook.com/P.AbuHasan

Al-Arabiya Arabic Television Report on His Death: http://youtu.be/wszju55Tvz4 

Daily hell of citizen journalists in Syria

Fatima Khaled Saad

_______________________________________________________________________________

OCTOBER UPDATE: I am devastated to learn that Fatima Khaled Saad is feared to have died under torture. The Syrian League for the Defense of Human Rights believes she passed away on Tuesday, October 23, at a Damascus branch of the General Security Directorate. See "Young Syrian female activist dies under torture."

________________________________________________________________________________

With traditional media officially locked out of Syria since the start of the revolution there in March 2011, citizen journalism has taken over the mantle, at a great cost.

It is through citizen journalism that news, photographs and videos of what is happening in Syria are now relayed to the outside world, at the heavy cost of detention, torture and death.

One of the latest citizen journalists to have been arrested in June is Fatima Khaled Saad based in the Syrian port city of Latakia.

Reporters Without Borders says, “It seems Saad’s only crime was to have possessed recordings of songs praising the uprising by Syria’s youth.

“She has been subjected to a great deal of physical and psychological violence during her arbitrary detention, which must end. We call for the immediate and unconditional release of Saad and all the other journalists and citizen journalists detained in Syria.”

Security officials arrested Saad, her father, Khaled Saad, and her brother during a search of their home on June 28. They seized her digital camera, memory card and telephone. Her father and brother were released but Fatima Saad was rushed to Latakia military hospital after being mistreated during a lengthy interrogation by intelligence officers.

On July 17, she was transferred to the headquarters of the military intelligence branch in Damascus where, according to some Reporters Without Borders sources, she is being held in Section 291.

“The way the regime tends to treat its opponents is grounds for concern about Saad’s fate. It is clear that the nature of her past activities is such that her life could now be in danger,” it notes.

Reporters Without Borders has launched a #DeadTweet campaign to take us into the daily hell of citizen journalists.

To pay tribute to the unprecedented number of citizen journalists who lost their lives to send out pictures of the uprising, Reporters Without Borders and its advertising agency JWT Paris, through a unique live Tweet, are bringing to life the experiences of people who find ways of circulating information amidst danger.

The Assad government has killed at least 38 citizen journalists and media workers since the start of the uprising in Syria in March 2011.

Their only crime was to disseminate information and spread the truth about the bloody crackdown that is still in progress against the Syrian people. Their main weapons are mobile phones and the Internet.

The #DeadTweet campaign poster

The #DeadTweet campaign image shows a lifeless hand covered in earth and blood. Next to it, there is a smart phone with a QR code on its illuminated screen. When it is scanned, a Twitter-style application starts up, taking the user into the live tweet of an imaginary citizen journalist in the midst of the conflict in Homs. The application shows his final minutes in detail through his feed. Events gradually take an unexpected turn until the final outcome.

The press and poster campaign uses the QR code to raise awareness about citizens’ efforts to cover conflicts in countries where authoritarian governments impose a media blackout by trying to shut out foreign journalists. When journalists can no longer do their job, these citizens are an essential information link and play their part in informing the world, sometimes paying the price with their lives.

The past few weeks have been particularly deadly, with around 10 citizen journalists killed since late May, says Reporters Without Borders. June saw the death of an unprecedented number of citizen journalists who sacrificed their lives to provide video footage of the uprising, the crackdown and now the military operations by armed groups fighting the ruthless Assad regime. Among them:

• Mohamed Sami Al-Kayyal, arrested June 27 in the coastal city of Tartus.
• Wael Omar Bard, killed June 26 in Jarjanaz, 40 km south of Idlib.
• Hamza Mahmoud Othman, fatally shot by a sniper in Homs on June 21.
• Ali “Al-Jedd” Othman, Hamza’s brother, the citizen journalist who ran the Baba Amr press center in Homs until it was destroyed last February and who was then captured by intelligence officers on 28 March.
• Bassim Darwish, died June 15 from the injuries he sustained two days earlier in an explosion while covering the air bombing of Rastan, a town 30 km north of Homs. He was one of the founders of the Rastan press center and had covered many demonstrations in the region as well as the regular army’s operations.
• Ayham Youssef Al-Hariri, a 35-year-old father of five and anti-government activist since March 2011, fatally injured by the blast from a shell in Deraa on June 13.
• Abdelhamid Idriss Matar, a 22-year-old student of agro-food engineering at Baath University in Homs, fatally injured by a tank shell as he filmed an assault on Al-Qussair, a town 25 km south of Homs, on May 31.

Reporters Without Borders barometer

Reporters Without Borders already reported the deaths of two other citizen journalists: Ahmed Hamada in Homs on June 16 and Khaled al-Bakir in al-Qussair on June 10.

It also condemned the deaths of two citizen journalists in detention, Hassan Mohamed Al-Azhari and Rami Ismael Iqbal.

Arrested in Latakia on April 13, Azhari was transferred to an intelligence agency prison in Damascus. His family was told he died in detention -- probably under torture -- on May 17. Aged 24, he was one of the founders of the Coordinating Committee in Latakia, where he filmed demonstrations and the government’s crackdown.

Iqbal, 28, died in detention following his arrest last December 21, but it is not known exactly where and when he died. A citizen journalist since the start of the uprising, he filmed local developments and fed information to foreign media. He was first arrested on March 20, 2011, for giving an interview to the BBC and went underground after his release.

The concept of citizen journalism -- or public, participatory, democratic, guerrilla, or street journalism -- is based upon the testimony and reporting of the news by the public.

Citizen journalism critics claim it is unregulated, subjective, amateurish and haphazard in quality and coverage, which is, I think, precisely its value.

Abraham Zapruder, who filmed the assassination of President John F. Kennedy with a home-movie camera, way back on November 22, 1963, is sometimes presented as a forefather of citizen journalists.

Time magazine's cover in 2007

Thanks to the Internet, we’re all now able to share information globally. It is this power that is threatening, especially in times of war and conflict. What you could only get through newspapers and television, is now available instantaneously online through blogs, podcasts, streaming videos, social media networks and web-related platforms. You just need a smartphone, a laptop and an Internet connection.

My thoughts and prayers are with Fatima Khaled Saad, Bassel Khartabil, Tal al-Mallouhi and the hundreds of political prisoners, prisoners of conscience and citizen journalists currently held in Syria. May they all be back with their families and online before long.

Related posts:

Free Bassel by Jillian C. York – June 30, 2012

The forgotten bloggers by Jillian C York – June 23, 2012

Released Syria activist shared Tal cell – May 17, 2012

Jailed Syrian teen defines terror – February 17, 2011

Another Syrian blogger held – February 22, 2011

Ali Ferzat: Cartooning for freedom

Syrian cartoonist Ali Ferzat (photo by AFP)

The world tipped its hat twice this month in honor of Syrian cartoonist Ali Ferzat.

The first time was on December 8 at the Le Monde auditorium in Paris. The second was on December 14 at the European Union Parliament in Strasbourg.

In Paris, Reporters Without Borders and Le Monde, with the support of TV5MONDE, awarded Ferzat the 2011 Press Freedom Prize, naming him the 2011 Journalist of the year. The 2011 Media of the Year prize went to the Burmese publication, Weekly Eleven News.

The second was on December 14, when at a formal sitting in Strasbourg the European Union Parliament conferred the 2011 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought on Ferzat and four other Arab Spring activists – two men and two women.

The two men are Mohamed Bouazizi of Tunisia, whose death in January helped spark the Arab Spring, and Libyan dissident Ahmed al-Zubair Ahmed al-Senussi who spent 31 years in prison for opposing the Gaddafi regime.

The two women are Egypt's Asma Mahfouz, a founder of the April 6 Youth Movement, and Razan Zeitouneh, a lawyer, writer and human rights activist who documented human rights abuses on her website “Syrian Human Rights Information Link.”

Pen and paper have been Ali Ferzat’s armory since his teens. A political satirist and head of the Arab Cartoonists' Association, his works have been published in countless Syrian, Arab and international publications. His more than 15,000 comic strips have been reviling injustice, repression, despotism, violence, and corruption for decades. Arab governments, including in his native country, repeatedly banned his creations, which are typically without captions. But Ferzat never stopped censuring the abuse of power or championing freedom and democracy in Arab countries and at home. So when the Arab Spring reached Syria last March, he quickly put his shoulder to its wheel.

Ferzat after his August 25 beating

Five months into the Arab Spring in Syria, masked men seized Ferzat in Umayyad Square in Old Damascus while he was heading home in the early hours of August 25. The “spooks” beat him up badly, breaking two of his left fingers and maiming his right arm and one of his eyes. They then bundled him out of their van by the side of the airport road and drove off with his attaché case.

The attack came days after Ferzat published a cartoon depicting Bashar Assad thumbing a ride with Moammar Gaddafi, who is shown driving a getaway car.

When working as a journalist alongside two renowned Arab cartoonists -- the late Imad Shehadeh and the late Mahmoud Kahil – I realized that, much as a picture, a cartoon is worth a thousand words.

To me, breaking a cartoonist’s fingers or hand is like smashing a runner’s legs or impairing a surgeon’s vision.

The 60-year-old Syrian cartoonist rose to prominence in the 1980s with his satirical yet nondescript images of bureaucrats, bullies and Big Brother. His first professional drawings appeared, when he was 14, on the front pages of al-Ayyam newspaper, shortly before the ruling Baath Party banned it. In 1969, he started drawing comic strips for the state-run daily al-Thawra. In the mid-1970s he moved to another government-controlled newspaper, Tishreen.

International recognition followed in 1980, when Ferzat won the first prize at the Intergraphic International Festival in Berlin and his caricatures started featuring in France’s prestigious Le Monde. His 1989 exhibition at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris set off a death threat from Saddam Hussein.

Ferzat launched his own satirical newspaper – al-Domari or the Lamplighter – in 2000. Styled like the French weekly Le Canard Enchaîné, it was the first independent publication in Syria since the Baath Party takeover in 1963. The 50,000 copies of the first print run of its first edition in February 2001 sold out in less than four hours. By 2003, however, frequent government restrictions, censorship and lack of funds forced Ferzat to close down al-Domari.

Presenting the 2011 Journalist of the Year award in absentia to Ferzat at the Le Monde auditorium in Paris on December 8, Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Jean-François Julliard said:

“This year we are honoring a courageous journalist who has been the victim of brutal repression by an obsolete government. Ali Ferzat fully deserves this award. His cartoons target the abuses of a desperate regime with its back to the wall and encourage Syrians to demand their rights and to express themselves freely.”

“I would have liked to have been with you this evening to take part in this beautiful event,” Ferzat said in a letter read out by the French cartoonist Plantu. “I dedicate this award to the martyrs, to those who have been injured and to those who struggle for freedom. May thanks be given to all those who have turned the Arab Spring into a victory over darkness and repression… I salute all those who take to the streets, everywhere in the world, searching for freedom, democracy and dignity.”

The European Parliament in turn honored the five Arab Spring recipients of its Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought at an award ceremony held in Strasburg six days later, on December 14.

The Sakharov Prize is named after Soviet scientist and dissident Andrei Sakharov, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975. The European Parliament established it in December 1988 to honor individuals or organizations committed to the defense of human rights and freedom of thought. Past winners include South Africa's first black president, Nelson Mandela, and former UN chief Kofi Annan.

Speaker Jerzy Buzek told lawmakers, “2011 will go down in history as the year of the Arab Spring. The European Parliament recognizes the efforts of all those who struggle for dignity, basic freedoms and political change in the Arab world.”

Ferzat thanked the EU parliamentarians for his Sakharov Prize through a video message, saying he felt “extremely bitter and very sad” about the mounting death toll in Syria. “People are demonstrating in the streets at the moment. They don’t fear death... They are telling us liberty is beyond price.”

Syrian lawyer and blogger Razan Zeitouneh was also honored, but could not attend the award ceremony because she had gone into hiding after being accused by the regime of being a foreign agent.

“It is not possible to stop the march of this people to freedom and dignity,” Zeitouneh wrote in a letter to the EU lawmakers, dedicating the prize to “Little Ghiyath,” the newborn son of an activist who was killed by Syrian security forces in September.

You can view the jam-packed archive of Ferzat’s cartoons on his website.