RSF and partners call on UK government to explain delays in granting award-winning journalist Zaina Erhaim British citizenship
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and other leading press freedom and human rights organisations have expressed concern over delays in granting British citizenship to journalist Zaina Erhaim, an award-winning journalist who has previously been targeted by the Syrian regime.
In a joint statement to British Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, RSF, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Index on Censorship and the Council for Arab-British Understanding called for the UK authorities to be fully transparent about the reasons for the delay, and to provide reassurances that there is no Syrian interference in the process.
In 2016, at the request of Damascus, UK Border officials confiscated Erhaim’s passport and briefly detained her as she entered the UK to receive an award for her work. The issue was only resolved following the intervention of press freedom and human rights organisations.
“UK authorities must be fully transparent about the nature of enquiries they are undertaking with regards Zaina Erhaim, an RSF prize laureate whose courageous work has made her a target of the Syrian regime. Given that Syria has tried to restrict her freedom of movement in the past — and that the UK failed to protect her on that occasion — we call on the Home Office to expedite her citizenship and provide reassurance there is no involvement of Syrian authorities. Allowing foreign governments to manipulate the immigration system to punish journalists would be in total contravention of the UK’s commitment to press freedom.”
Erhaim, who won an RSF Press Freedom Award in 2015 for her courageous work training citizen journalists in Aleppo, has lived in the UK since 2017 and applied for British citizenship on 1 October 2023, a process that usually takes six months. More than a year later, she has been notified by the Home Office that other “agencies” are conducting enquiries on its behalf, and that it does not know how long those enquiries might take.
Syria is ranked 179th out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2024 World Press Freedom Index. The UK is ranked 23rd.
