Mazen Darwish

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Mazen Darwish ( Arabic مازن درويش, DMG Māzin Darwīš ; born 1974 ) is a Syrian lawyer and human rights activist . He is president of the Syrian "Center for Media and Freedom of Expression" and lives in exile in Germany.

Mazen Darwish

Life

Darwish is President of the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression (CMFE), a partner organization of Reporters Without Borders , which he founded in 2004. The organization was refused accreditation by the Syrian government , but it continued to operate underground.

In April 2008, Darwish and a colleague were arrested after they reported riots in Adra, Syria, a city near Damascus . He then spent ten days in jail for "defaming and denigrating state authority". After he was arrested in a raid on his center's offices in February 2012, he was never released and tried before a military tribunal. If convicted, he faces the death penalty. Darwish was provisionally released in August 2015 and a month later a court granted him amnesty.

Prices

Mazen Darwish received the 2011 Roland Berger Human Dignity Prize for his tireless fight for freedom of the press and freedom of expression in Syria . Since he was not allowed to leave the country himself, his wife and mother took part in the award ceremony in Berlin. In 2012 Darwish was named Journalist of the Year by the human rights organization Reporters Without Borders. Mazen Darwish was awarded the Bruno Kreisky Prize in 2013 for services to human rights . Above all, he drew attention to the disappearance of reporters and bloggers in Syria, so the Bruno Kreisky Foundation justified the award. Instead of the imprisoned award winner, his wife Yara Bader accepted the award in Vienna.

In May 2014, Reporters Without Borders named him the “Freedom of the Press Hero”. In 2015 the Union of Luther Cities awarded Darwish the prize “The Intrepid Word” to support the efforts to free Mazen Darwish and other journalists. The prize was presented to his wife in the city ​​church in Wittenberg . In February 2015, Mazen Darwish was named a World Press Freedom Hero by the International Press Institute (IPI) . Also in 2015 Darwish was awarded the Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize by UNESCO. In 2016 he was honored with the Four Freedoms Award in the category of freedom of expression in Middelburg .

In 2018, together with Yara Bader, on behalf of the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression, he was awarded the Shalom Prize of the Shalom Working Group of the Student Convention of the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt .

literature

  • Adnan Al Mekdad: “We need to come to terms with it.” Interview with the human rights activist Mazen Darwish. In: Tagesspiegel , September 8, 2017 ( online version )

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Statement by Ambassador Rice on the United Nations Economic and Social Council Decision to Grant Consultative Status to Three NGOs, June 27, 2013 ( Memento of December 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ^ Independent journalist Sentenced for Defamation . Reporters Without Borders. June 24, 2008. Archived from the original on August 18, 2012. Retrieved on August 18, 2012.
  3. ↑ Red lines that cannot be crossed . In: The Economist . July 24, 2008. Archived from the original on August 18, 2012. Retrieved on August 18, 2012.
  4. ↑ Syrian free speech campaigner may face death penalty: ICJ . Reuters. August 8, 2012. Retrieved December 1, 2013.
  5. ↑ 09/01/2015 Press release - Mazen Darwish released - Amnesty for the winner of the “Undaunted Word”. Retrieved March 13, 2019 .
  6. ↑ Syrian journalist Mazen Darwish and Afghan daily newspaper honored . Reporters without borders. January 3, 2013. Accessed September 30, 2013.
  7. ^ Bruno Kreisky Foundation . June 28, 2013. Retrieved September 30, 2013.
  8. ^ Reporters Without Borders eV: Heroes of Freedom of the Press. Retrieved February 1, 2018 .
  9. ^ Winner of the Intrepid Word 2015
  10. ↑ International Press Institute (IPI): Syrian Mazen Darwish named IPI World Press Freedom Hero. February 26, 2015, accessed September 16, 2016 .
  11. ^ "The word is a right, to defend it, is a duty" - Shalom Prize 2018 , AK Shalom from February 20, 2018; Accessed March 27, 2018
personal data
SURNAME Darwish, Mazen
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Syrian lawyer and human rights activist
DATE OF BIRTH 1974