Syrian woman blogger Razan
Ghazzawi has been honored with this year's Human Rights Defenders at Risk award
by the Dublin-based Front Line Defenders foundation, the group announced on
Friday.
Ghazzawi, who has become a
symbol of the Syrian uprising, is currently on trial before a military court
charged with "possessing prohibited materials with the intent to
disseminate them.”
Front Line said she was
presented with the award at a ceremony in Dublin's City Hall by Aryeh Neier,
president of the Open Societies Foundations and a founder of Human Rights
Watch, for her "exceptional contribution" to human rights.
Her colleague Dlshad
Othman, who has himself been a target for the Syrian authorities because of his
human rights work and had to leave Syria two months ago for his own security,
accepted the award on Ghazzawi's behalf.
In a statement read out on
Ghazzawi's behalf at the ceremony she said she saw the award as being was for
all citizen journalists "who died trying to tell the world what's
happening in Syria, when the traditional media have failed to do so.”
"Syrian citizen
journalists and filmmakers tell the revolution in all its colours, through the
good times and the bad times. And many have died doing so," she said.
Ghazzawi and six other
female activists were recently freed from detention.
They had been arrested
during a raid on the Syrian Centre for Media and Freedom of Expression.
Her colleague and director
of SCM, Mazen Darwish is currently being held in incommunicado in detention
with four other colleagues.
Front Line said Ghazzawi
was on trial because she used her blog and the power of social media to
"expose the crimes being committed by the Syrian regime.”
"The ongoing trial is
an attempt by the Government to crackdown on free speech activists and restrict
the flow of information out of Syria," Front Line said.
Front Line founder and
executive director Mary Lawlor said the fact the foundation had received more
nominations for the award that ever before—107 from 46 countries—was a sign of
the increased levels of repression faced by human rights defenders in many
countries.
"Ghazzawi is typical
of the selfless courage shown by all the human rights defenders nominated for
this year's award.”
"She has challenged
the repressive forces of the Syrian regime and has chosen not to hide behind a
pseudonym but to speak out publicly. In doing so she has become a force to be
reckoned with," Lawlor said.
Since the start of the
Syrian uprising Ghazzawi, an English literature graduate from Damascus
University, has become a symbol of the resistance to the repression by the
Syrian Government.
Front Line said she is
known for her fierce criticism of the government, mostly expressed on her blog
Razaniyyat and via her twitter account @RedRazan.
Social networking sites
have played a key role in mobilizing the anti-regime protests which have swept
Syria since March, 2010. Thousands of people have been killed, according to the
United Nations, in Syria's crackdown on dissent.
Foreign journalists are
mostly banned from covering the unrest, leaving the international media
dependent on reports from activists and videos on YouTube and other Internet
sites, posted at the risk of arrest.
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