The UN’s cultural body on Sunday awarded its annual press freedom prize to Syrian journalist and rights activist Mazen Darwish, who has been jailed by the regime for more than three years.
Darwish was arrested on Feb. 16, 2012 along with Hani Zaitani and Hussein Ghreir, his colleagues at the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression. They are accused of “promoting terrorist acts.”
“I call on the Syrian authorities for his and his colleagues’ release,” United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) director-general Irina Bokova said at a ceremony in Latvia to mark World Press Freedom Day, echoing repeated calls by rights groups, press organizations and the UN.
Darwish is one of the founders of www.syriaview.net, an independent news Web site banned by Syrian authorities in 2006 — a move he said at the time was part of the state’s “repression which targets free expression and democratic activists.”
UNESCO awarded its prize to Darwish “in recognition of the work that he has carried out in Syria for more than 10 years at great personal sacrifice, enduring a travel ban, harassment, as well as repeated detention and torture.”
Darwish’s wife Yara Bader accepted the award on his behalf. She said the prize was important in raising awareness not only of his case but of the “hundreds” of people currently imprisoned in Syria for openly expressing their views.
Human rights groups said about 100,000 people have been detained since the uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s rule erupted in March 2011, which escalated into an armed rebellion after the regime unleashed a brutal crackdown. Another 50,000 people are believed to be held by the regime’s myriad of military intelligence branches.
“Mazen has already forgiven those who tortured him almost to death,” Bader said and dedicated the award to his children, in the hope that they would grow up in a free Syria.
“We need a time to learn how to listen to people who have different opinions,” she said, adding that she took heart from the example of Australian-Latvian journalist Peter Greste — who attended the award ceremony and was himself released from an Egyptian prison in February after more than a year, thanks to a global campaign.
“I’m very sure Mazen will be released one day,” Bader told reporters.
Created in 1997, the annual UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize honors a person, organization or institution that has made a contribution to the defense and, or promotion of press freedom anywhere in the world.
It is named in honor of Guillermo Cano Isaza, a Colombian journalist who was assassinated in front of the offices of his newspaper, El Espectador, in Bogota in 1986.
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