**Journalists have long faced suspicion and harassment from - TopicsExpress



          

**Journalists have long faced suspicion and harassment from rebels, gunmen forcing them to stop filming, sometimes seizing equipment or raiding apartments and cafes where they have set up media centers to share and distribute videos and reports. But in recent months, events have taken a more sinister turn. Several of those working in Aleppo have gone missing. In some cases, their bodies have been found - tortured, shot and left on the street. Friends and relatives of others have been told by militants that the activists have been arrested. They know everything, an activist from Deir al-Zor said. One word can get you killed or make you disappear ... They look for our names, what we said to this newspaper or to that magazine. They watch us like hawks. And then they act. ..... In particular, those who spoke recounted the fear spread by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). The al Qaeda-linked group, dominated by foreigners blooded in other wars, from Libya to Iraq and Afghanistan, does not tolerate critics. It is impossible for me to go to Syria now. I am wanted by the regime and by al Qaeda, said Rami Jarrah, who ran a radio station in the city of Raqqa until early October, when ISIL gunmen shut it down and took away one of his colleagues. Now living in Turkey, from where Radio ANA continues to broadcast into Syria, Jarrah won early fame among media activists in 2011, employing the English of his British education to forge an international reputation blogging from Damascus, where foreign news organizations had little access. When a pen-name - Alexander Page - failed to shield his identity, he fled the country but returned later to liberated northern Syria, where he helped set up broadcasting in Raqqa. The stations mistake, he said, was to open its airwaves to phone-in callers venting grievances against the Islamists: People were calling in and saying ISIL did this and did that. They closed my shop or attacked my wife and forced the hijab on her, Jarrah said. The militants, online themselves, accused him of atheism and put a price on his head. ..... The militant Islamists have won respect among Syrians in the north, partly by their fighting mettle, party by imposing order where feuding among rival rebel warlords had broken out, partly by ensuring supplies of food and medicines. Jarrah said those who campaigned for free speech must bear some blame for their predicament: We used to say Its OK, they believe in God and fight on the frontlines, he said. So we ignored their atrocities.**
Posted on: Wed, 27 Nov 2013 21:20:14 +0000

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