His Excellency Bashar al-Assad
President of Syria
Presidential Palace
Damascus
Arab Republic of Syria
Vienna, 8 November 2001
Your Excellency,
The International Press Institute (IPI), the global network of editors, media executives and leading journalists, strongly condemns the harassment of journalist Nizar Nayyouf’s relatives by the authorities and members of the governing party, al-Ba’ath, in Syria.
According to the information before IPI, two of Nayyouf’s brothers, Amjad and Mamdouh Nayyouf, who worked as teachers, were dismissed from their positions after refusing to condemn their brother’s critical statements about the Syrian government. Another brother, Hayyan Nayyouf, a student at Tishreen University in Lattakia, was threatened by university officials, who told him that, unless he publicly stated that his brother’s statements were lies, he would not be allowed to graduate.
All three brothers were given a further ultimatum by the authorities to either condemn Nizar Nayyouf’s statements by 22 November 2001 or face exile. In addition, land belonging to their parents, Ali and Douha Nayyouf, has now been seized by authorities.
As a member of the banned Independent Committee for the Defence of Democratic Freedoms and Human Rights in Syria and editor-in-chief of its monthly newsletter, Sawt-al-Democratiyya (“Democracy’s Voice”), Nizar Nayyouf, one of IPI’s “50 World Press Freedom Heroes”, was arrested on 10 January 1992. Following his arrest, he was sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment for disseminating false information and belonging to an unauthorised organisation. After nine years in prison, he was released on 22 June and allowed to travel abroad for medical treatment.
The harassment of Nizar Nayyouf’s family comes at a time when the journalist is in France for medical treatment necessitated by his many years in prison. While in jail, Nayyouf was tortured and beaten so severely that he is partially paralysed from the waist down and nearly blind.
On 3 September, while still receiving medical treatment in France, Nayyouf was charged in absentia with “trying to change the constitution by illegal means and issuing false reports from a foreign country”. IPI looks upon these most recent charges, in conjunction with the harassment of Nazir Nayyouf’s family, as a gross violation of everyone’s right to freedom of opinion and expression, as guaranteed by Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
We therefore urge Your Excellency to do everything in your power to end the unjust harassment of the Nayyouf family and to ensure that the charges against Nazir Nayyouf are immediately dropped.
We thank you for your attention.
Yours sincerely,
Johann P. Fritz
Director
