FRANCE: French rights group Reporters Without Borders says Arab League monitoring mission in Syria is a farce

Record ID: 280119

  • Title: FRANCE: French rights group Reporters Without Borders says Arab League monitoring mission in Syria is a farce
  • Date: 30th December 2011
  • Summary: PARIS, FRANCE (DECEMBER 29, 2011) (REUTERS) REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS HUMAN RIGHTS ORGANISATION OFFICES VARIOUS OF HEAD OF MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA OPERATIONS FOR REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS, SOAZIG DOLLET WORKING ON COMPUTER
  • Embargoed: 14th January 2012 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: France, France
  • Country: France
  • Topics: Communications,International Relations,Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA7Q2TZ4AUSZ66KBE8PS2I4Y518
  • Story Text: French human rights group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) (Reporters Sans Frontieres ) accused Syrian authorities on Thursday (December 29) of trying to bend the the Arab monitoring mission to serve their own ends, they say it is a farce.
    "This visit is totally biased, it's a farce, the Syrian regime making a mockery of respecting the Arab League agreement by accepting the presence of observers, but emptying prisons -- as a Human Rights Watch report clearly showed yesterday -- some prisons in Homs were emptied and detainees transferred to other places," said the Reporters Without Borders Middle East expert Soazig Dollet in Paris. "Fake armed soldiers were shown to observers in order to demonstrate that the Syrian resistance is an armed one. It is armed, but that is not the only kind of resistance. It is obvious that it has all been staged for the observers of the Arab League," she said.
    A group of members of an Arab League mission was to assess whether Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is keeping a promise to withdraw troops from cities and halt violence that threatens to spiral into civil war.
    The mission, the first international involvement on the ground in Syria since the revolt began last March, got off to a controversial start on Wednesday when its Sudanese leader said he had seen "nothing frightening" on his first trip to Homs.
    He later said he needed more time to make an assessment of the city, which was pounded by government firepower in the days before the visit.
    The 21-member group of Arab states has threatened sanctions if the crackdown continues -- a punishment Moscow rejects warning that any arms embargo would cut off Damascus from weapons, while protesters attain weapons, helping to escalate the conflict.
    RSF also called for the liberation of journalists they say are held in Syrian prisons saying that it was very difficult to ascertain information coming out of the country.
    "Video footage is coming out of Syria and information is circulating. It is getting more organised, but the most difficult for the moment in Syria is to verify the information that is coming out. The authorities have a cyber army which is very very active on the web so it is very important for us to double check information sources when it lands on the internet," Dollet said.
    Sixty-six journalists were killed and more than 1,000 arrested this year, Reporters Without Borders says, naming cities in Syria, Egypt and Libya among the world's most dangerous places for the media.
    RSF said a tumultuous year, which included the Arab Spring uprisings and the felling of several veteran Arab dictators, saw a 16 percent rise compared to last year in the number of journalists arrested world-wide.
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