#raqqa
Like many journalists with an interest in the war in Syria I had heard of Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently and had followed the group’s posts online to learn about life under jihadist rule.
I had read how they were using undercover reporters inside Raqqa and I became fascinated by how they operate as a group. In June last year I began messaging their spokesman, Abdalaziz Alhamza who now lives in Europe, and soon we were talking over the phone.
He was keen to get as much coverage of the situation in Raqqa as possible. It took a while to persuade him that the members’ personal stories deserved to be told.
Eventually, I flew out to meet Abdalaziz in January and spent a few days with him. It was a while before I could get him to open up about everything he and his friends had been through. That time spent just chatting, without any recording, was vital in gaining his trust.
It’s not often that BBC budgets can accommodate such an expense but for sensitive stories such as this one it is essential. It helps having an editor who gets that (Richard Knight) and room in the budget for you.
Read the full story at the BBC.
Watch Chloe Hadjimatheou’s five-part documentary ‘Islamic State’s’ Most Wanted.
Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently was the recipient of CPJ’s International Press Freedom Award in 2015.
RBSS is one of the only independent outlets operating inside Syria to tell the truth about life inside ISIS held territory
Ahmed Mohamed al-Mousa, a member of Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently. was killed today by a group of masked men in Idlib, Syria, according to the citizen journalist group, which CPJ honored last month with its 2015 International Press Freedom Award.
Syrian Journalists Risk Death Covering Life Under Airstrikes And ISIS Occupation
“All of us are accepting that any one of us will be killed at anytime or anywhere,” one says.
TV anchors and correspondents have flooded Paris in the last few days, but journalists are nowhere to be seen on the streets of Raqqa, Syria, where both French and Russian warplanes are pounding Islamic State targets in response to recent terrorist attacks.
That doesn’t mean some aren’t bravely covering the impact of aerial bombardment and Islamic State occupation. Since April 2014, members of activist organization Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently have secretly produced the most sustained coverage of life under Islamic State control. In the days since Friday’s attacks in Paris, its dispatches have been widely cited by news organizations and circulated on social media.
“We are fighting for our city,” AbdAlaziz Alhamza, a member of the group, told The Huffington Post in an interview Tuesday. “We don’t have weapons, but we have our pens or our website or whatever. We are fighting online.”
Alhamza, a 24-year-old Syrian refugee now living in Berlin, was visiting New York, where theCommittee to Protect Journalists will honor his group next week.
Read full story by Michael Calderone at the Huffington Post
Image credits in captions
Impunity Spotlight: Syria
Al-Moutaz Bellah Ibrahim
Shaam News Network. May 4, 2014, in Raqqa, Syria
Ibrahim, a correspondent for the independent Shaam News Network and a freelance reporter, was killed in Tel Abyad, a Syrian town north of the city of Raqqa, on May 4, according to Shaam and the Beirut-based SKeyes Center for Media and Cultural Freedom. Ibrahim was kidnapped by the Islamic State militant group (then called Islamic State in Iraq and Sham) in March, two months before his death, according to news reports and local press groups. His family received his body on May 7, 2014.
Read more about Al-Moutaz Bellah Ibrahim.
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Syria is #3 on CPJ’s 2015 Impunity Index, which calculates the number of unsolved journalist murders as a percentage of each country’s population. This month CPJ is highlighting cases from each of the 14 countries on the list ahead of the International Day to End Impunity on November 2.
Syria
War-torn Syria has jumped two spots to number three from number five. Eleven journalists have been deliberately killed since 2012, all with complete impunity. Increasingly, violence against the press is used in Syria not only as a means to control coverage but as a propaganda tactic. Islamist State militants beheaded three foreign correspondents beginning in August 2014, videotaping the gruesome acts for social media. But local journalists covering the devastating conflict within their own communities are frequently targeted not only by militant groups, but security forces and Syrian rebels. Syria is the most dangerous country in the world for journalists. Since the conflict began in 2011, at least 85 journalists have been killed by crossfire, on dangerous assignments, or murdered.
IMPUNITY INDEX RATING: 0.496 unsolved journalist murders per million inhabitants
LAST YEAR: Ranked 5th with a rating of 0.313
Someone wrote a thank you letter to us for giving Raqqa is Being Slaughted Silently (a Syrian Citizen Journalist collective) this year’s International Press Freedom award and took pictures of it in the Islamic State’s self proclaimed capital: Raqqa City
The journalists being honored at CPJ's International Press Freedom Awards in New York on November 24 include the Zone 9 bloggers who were charged with terrorism in Ethiopia over their work; Malaysian cartoonist Zunar, who risks being imprisoned for lampooning authorities; Cándido Figueredo Ruíz, a Paraguayan reporter under police protection after receiving death threats; and Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, an independent Syrian news group reporting from the region taken by militants the Islamic State.
Read their full bios.
Artist Molly Crabapple has completed sketches based on the scenes presented in the source’s photos. “With the exception of Vice News, ISIS has permitted no foreign journalists to document life under their rule in Raqqa,” Crabapple wrote. “Instead, they rely on their own propaganda. To create these images, I drew from cell-phone photos a Syrian sent me of daily life in the city. Like the Internet, art evades censorship.”
via vanityfair
