Syria
Organisation:
Domain name : .sy
Population : 19,747,586
Internet-users : 2,132,000
Average hourly charge for one hour's connection at a cybercafé : from 50 centimes to 1 euro
Average monthly salary : About 140 euros in the public sector
Number of private Internet service providers : 4
Number of public Internet service providers : 2
Number of imprisoned bloggers : 1
After China and Vietnam, the Syrian Arab Republic is one of the world’s most repressive countries towards Internet users. Five cyberdissidents are behind bars for having gone online. At the outset, the government allowed the market to develop, using rivalry among access provider competitors to help Syrians to get online more easily. Six operators have shared the market since 2005, STE (The Ministry of Telecommunications), the state-owned Syrian Computer Society (SCS) and four private access providers Aya, Cec-Sy, ZAD and SyriaTech. It is no longer necessary to have a particular professional reason to get an Internet connection, just a matter of producing an identity card or a passport. Internet use continues to rise in Syria, even if only 10% of the population use it. The price of connection has gone down and Internet cafés have flourished in poor neighbourhoods, often connected through broadband. There are 40 times more users now than in 2004, an upsurge that has prompted the authorities to control news put out online. Surveillance and censorship are commonplace on the Syrian Web. The Syrian Computer Society, the country’s leading access provider, can intercept emails and therefore monitor dissidents. However, under the Syrian constitution adopted in 1973, “every citizen has the right to freely and openly express opinions, orally, in writing or by any other means of expression (...).The state guarantees freedom of the press (...) under the law” (Article 38). The Syrian “café” Arrests linked to online activities are becoming ever more frequent – a practice which has even entered everyday language. Before arresting an Internet user, police officers say they are going to “drink a coffee”, meaning to interrogate someone about their online activities. At least five cyber-dissidents have been sentenced to prison terms of six months to four years since 2000. Some, like Mohammad Badi Dak al Bab and Homam Hassan Haddad, have been harassed by the authorities for contributing to online publications “damaging state prestige”, under Article 287 of the Syrian criminal code. The first of them was held in prison in Adra (about 20 kilometres north-east of Damascus) for six months, from 2 March to 17 September 2008. The second, a sociology student at Damascus University, was arrested by the intelligence services on 27 January 2009. Nothing has been heard of him since. He previously served three months in detention after being arrested on 4 May 2008 because of his online activities. He is in trouble over contributions to several editions of the magazine Boursates wa Aswak (Stock exchanges and markets) and several online publications. Others, such as Kareem Arabji, an accountancy graduate from Damascus University and Habib Saleh, a contributor to the censored website Elaph.com (http://www.elaph.com), have been held for more than a year without trial. Writer and poet Firas Saad was sentenced to four years in jail on 9 April 2008 for posting “false information” online. He is currently being held in Saydnaya prison, north of the capital, accused of damaging “state integrity” and weakening “national feeling”. Saad was arrested in November 2006 for articles he posted on Syrian websites, many of them banned within the country. In them, he criticised the “defeatism” of the Syrian regime in the Lebanon war of July 2006 and called government officials as “thoroughly corrupt, keeping down rather than defending Lebanon”. Security before service Telecommunications minister, Amr Salem, decreed on 25 July 2007 that website owners should keep personal details of authors of articles and comments. The following month he sent a circular to the same people telling them to make public the names of authors and commentators contributing to their sites, under threat of closure of their site. He added that “there is no need for proof to know that some articles and comments are false and that some expressions conflict with freedom of speech. Those who publicise them are guilty of defamation or violating public morals”. These measures allowed the authorities to arrest the blogger Tariq Biassi (http://alzohaly.ektob.com/), on 7 July 2007, for posting an article criticising the Syrian security services on an Internet forum. He was sentenced on 11 May 2008, to three years in prison, after being found guilty of “publishing false information” and “weakening national sentiment” under Articles 285 and 286 of the Syrian criminal code. The government also does its utmost to limit exchanges between Internet users. Since then, the authorities have blocked more than 160 websites that are critical of the government. They use a filter system called “Thundercache” to control content, get rid of viruses and prevent downloading of videos. This is why Skype is censored. The social networking site Facebook is banned on the Syrian Web, along with YouTube and Amazon, officially for fear that Israeli secret agents might infiltrate it. It is also very difficult to set up a blog in Syria. One of the biggest blog platforms, Blogspot, which is owned by Google, is inaccessible and the Arabic blog platform, Maktoob, is only partially available, some pages being blocked because of their content. Political and religious subjects are subjected to censorship and the Kurdish question is also very sensitive. Out of the 162 censored websites, almost a third of them relate to the Kurdish community. However filters put in place by the authorities to block websites seen as “sensitive” are easy to get round. Internet users often use the “Lebanese server” – a connection via a long distance phone call to a Lebanese access provider not subjected to Syrian restrictions and at no extra cost. But there are also other solutions. One example is the website of human rights defender Mohammad al-Abdallah, Raye7 w mish RaJ3 (http://raye7wmishraj3.wordpress.com - I am going and not coming back) which has been inaccessible since 13 January 2009, but which is now readable on a “mirror site” that reproduces its content on the following address: http://rwmr.wordpress.com. Links
http://www.All4syria.com (Arabic): news website on Syria, censored within the country
http://www.arabnews.com (English): news website about Arab countries
http://opennet.net/research/profiles/syria (English): a watch on the Syrian network kept by the Open Net Initiative.
http://www.ya-ashrafe-nnas.blogspot.com (English): “Decentering Damascus”, blog by Razan, a Syrian online free expression activist and one of the founders of the campaign for the release of Tariq Biasi.
Population : 19,747,586
Internet-users : 2,132,000
Average hourly charge for one hour's connection at a cybercafé : from 50 centimes to 1 euro
Average monthly salary : About 140 euros in the public sector
Number of private Internet service providers : 4
Number of public Internet service providers : 2
Number of imprisoned bloggers : 1
After China and Vietnam, the Syrian Arab Republic is one of the world’s most repressive countries towards Internet users. Five cyberdissidents are behind bars for having gone online. At the outset, the government allowed the market to develop, using rivalry among access provider competitors to help Syrians to get online more easily. Six operators have shared the market since 2005, STE (The Ministry of Telecommunications), the state-owned Syrian Computer Society (SCS) and four private access providers Aya, Cec-Sy, ZAD and SyriaTech. It is no longer necessary to have a particular professional reason to get an Internet connection, just a matter of producing an identity card or a passport. Internet use continues to rise in Syria, even if only 10% of the population use it. The price of connection has gone down and Internet cafés have flourished in poor neighbourhoods, often connected through broadband. There are 40 times more users now than in 2004, an upsurge that has prompted the authorities to control news put out online. Surveillance and censorship are commonplace on the Syrian Web. The Syrian Computer Society, the country’s leading access provider, can intercept emails and therefore monitor dissidents. However, under the Syrian constitution adopted in 1973, “every citizen has the right to freely and openly express opinions, orally, in writing or by any other means of expression (...).The state guarantees freedom of the press (...) under the law” (Article 38). The Syrian “café” Arrests linked to online activities are becoming ever more frequent – a practice which has even entered everyday language. Before arresting an Internet user, police officers say they are going to “drink a coffee”, meaning to interrogate someone about their online activities. At least five cyber-dissidents have been sentenced to prison terms of six months to four years since 2000. Some, like Mohammad Badi Dak al Bab and Homam Hassan Haddad, have been harassed by the authorities for contributing to online publications “damaging state prestige”, under Article 287 of the Syrian criminal code. The first of them was held in prison in Adra (about 20 kilometres north-east of Damascus) for six months, from 2 March to 17 September 2008. The second, a sociology student at Damascus University, was arrested by the intelligence services on 27 January 2009. Nothing has been heard of him since. He previously served three months in detention after being arrested on 4 May 2008 because of his online activities. He is in trouble over contributions to several editions of the magazine Boursates wa Aswak (Stock exchanges and markets) and several online publications. Others, such as Kareem Arabji, an accountancy graduate from Damascus University and Habib Saleh, a contributor to the censored website Elaph.com (http://www.elaph.com), have been held for more than a year without trial. Writer and poet Firas Saad was sentenced to four years in jail on 9 April 2008 for posting “false information” online. He is currently being held in Saydnaya prison, north of the capital, accused of damaging “state integrity” and weakening “national feeling”. Saad was arrested in November 2006 for articles he posted on Syrian websites, many of them banned within the country. In them, he criticised the “defeatism” of the Syrian regime in the Lebanon war of July 2006 and called government officials as “thoroughly corrupt, keeping down rather than defending Lebanon”. Security before service Telecommunications minister, Amr Salem, decreed on 25 July 2007 that website owners should keep personal details of authors of articles and comments. The following month he sent a circular to the same people telling them to make public the names of authors and commentators contributing to their sites, under threat of closure of their site. He added that “there is no need for proof to know that some articles and comments are false and that some expressions conflict with freedom of speech. Those who publicise them are guilty of defamation or violating public morals”. These measures allowed the authorities to arrest the blogger Tariq Biassi (http://alzohaly.ektob.com/), on 7 July 2007, for posting an article criticising the Syrian security services on an Internet forum. He was sentenced on 11 May 2008, to three years in prison, after being found guilty of “publishing false information” and “weakening national sentiment” under Articles 285 and 286 of the Syrian criminal code. The government also does its utmost to limit exchanges between Internet users. Since then, the authorities have blocked more than 160 websites that are critical of the government. They use a filter system called “Thundercache” to control content, get rid of viruses and prevent downloading of videos. This is why Skype is censored. The social networking site Facebook is banned on the Syrian Web, along with YouTube and Amazon, officially for fear that Israeli secret agents might infiltrate it. It is also very difficult to set up a blog in Syria. One of the biggest blog platforms, Blogspot, which is owned by Google, is inaccessible and the Arabic blog platform, Maktoob, is only partially available, some pages being blocked because of their content. Political and religious subjects are subjected to censorship and the Kurdish question is also very sensitive. Out of the 162 censored websites, almost a third of them relate to the Kurdish community. However filters put in place by the authorities to block websites seen as “sensitive” are easy to get round. Internet users often use the “Lebanese server” – a connection via a long distance phone call to a Lebanese access provider not subjected to Syrian restrictions and at no extra cost. But there are also other solutions. One example is the website of human rights defender Mohammad al-Abdallah, Raye7 w mish RaJ3 (http://raye7wmishraj3.wordpress.com - I am going and not coming back) which has been inaccessible since 13 January 2009, but which is now readable on a “mirror site” that reproduces its content on the following address: http://rwmr.wordpress.com. Links
http://www.All4syria.com (Arabic): news website on Syria, censored within the country
http://www.arabnews.com (English): news website about Arab countries
http://opennet.net/research/profiles/syria (English): a watch on the Syrian network kept by the Open Net Initiative.
http://www.ya-ashrafe-nnas.blogspot.com (English): “Decentering Damascus”, blog by Razan, a Syrian online free expression activist and one of the founders of the campaign for the release of Tariq Biasi.
Published on
Updated on
20.01.2016
Middle East - North Africa
