Razan Zaitouneh

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Razan Zaitouneh

Razan Zaitouneh ( Arabic رزان زيتونة, DMG Razān Zaitūna ; Born April 29, 1977 in Syria ) is a Syrian lawyer and journalist . She belongs to the democratic opposition and is one of the most famous faces of the non-violent Syrian resistance in the civil war in Syria . She has been missing since December 9, 2013.

Live and act

Zaitouneh graduated from the Damascus Law Faculty in 1999 . She began working as a human rights lawyer in 2001 and joined a group of lawyers devoted to defending political prisoners. Zaitouneh defended political prisoners regardless of their political orientation. She is one of the founding members of the human rights association in Syria HRAS - Human Rights Association in Syria, for which she worked until 2004.

Since 2004, long before the uprising against the government of Bashar al-Assad began, she has published dozens of articles and reports on websites and in various newspapers on the situation of human rights and freedom of expression in Syria. In 2005 she founded the Internet platform SHRIL (Syrian Human Rights Information Link vdc-sy.org), which serves as a database for human rights violations by the regime in the country. She also worked on the Committee for Support for the Families of Political Prisoners.

After being identified as a foreign agent on Syrian television, she was forced to go into hiding. That is why she has been living underground in Damascus since the beginning of the Syrian Revolution in early 2011, changing her hiding place several times a week and documenting human rights crimes by all parties to the conflict.

First, she wrote on her Facebook page about the developments on the street. The site soon became the central source of data on the Syrian Revolution. In cooperation with the local coordination offices (LCC) throughout Syria, she published information on planned demonstrations, the number of participants, arrests and the number of victims. She then founded the Violations Documentation Center (VDC) together with other activists , where she initially documented the regime's human rights violations and use of violence. Later she also documented the human rights violations of extremist groups in Syria. She collected and published the names of those killed by the regime as well as by the extremists.

In May 2011, her home in Damascus was stormed by Air Force intelligence . Her husband's 20-year-old brother, Aburrahman Hamada, who was visiting, was arrested as a hostage in exchange for the fugitive couple. After his arrest, Zaitouneh's husband Wa'el Hamada was also arrested by Air Force Intelligence. The brothers were held in solitary confinement for three months before they were released.

As the situation in the capital became too dangerous, Zaitouneh fled to the rebel-controlled areas of Eastern Ghouta . Here she witnessed the poison gas attack on the area. "The chemical weapons attack was a turning point," she wrote. She felt the resolution passed by the UN Security Council on the destruction of Syrian poison gas weapons as a “shock and humiliation”: “This resolution implies that the perpetrator, Bashar al Assad, will remain in power for at least another year - with the tolerance of the international community. "She also criticized:

“'The Syrians will not forget that the international community has been able to force the regime to destroy its chemical weapons - but is not able to force the regime to end the siege of entire cities where children are attacking every day To die of hunger. The phrase 'not being able to' is not correct at all. It would be more correct: 'it didn't want to or' it wasn't interested '"

- Razan Zaitouneh : TAZ

Awards

Zaitouneh has received numerous awards, including the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought (2011), the Anna Politkovskaya Prize for the Defense of Human Rights (2011), the Ibn Ruschd Prize (2012), the International Women of Courage Award (2013 ) and the Petra Kelly Prize (2014).

On May 3, 2014, International Press Freedom Day, Reporters Without Borders honored her with the “Freedom of Information Heroes” award.

kidnapping

On December 9, 2013, she and her husband Wa'el Hamada , the activist Samira Khalil and the lawyer and poet Nazem Hammadi were abducted by gunmen from their office in the Syrian Duma (Eastern Ghouta), a suburb of Damascus. Since then, all four have been considered missing. There is neither a sign of life nor have the kidnappers turned to the public with demands, which is why it has not been established beyond doubt who is responsible for the kidnapping.

What is certain, however, is that Zaitouneh has been threatened by both the Syrian authorities and armed opposition groups because of her activities. Several months before her abduction, she received threats, some of which she described in an article for the online news service Now Lebanon. In September 2013, she reported that she was also threatened by local armed groups in Douma. In April 2014, Zaitouneh's family issued a statement in which they held Zahran Alloush responsible for the well-being of the four abductees because his group, the Brigade of Islam, is so strongly represented in the area.

In December 2014, the FAZ reported on the efforts of the family and friends of the abductees to seek their release.

Syrian activists claimed in April 2019 that, through questioning other pro-Assad activists who were in the same prison, they learned that Zaitouneh had been sentenced to death and executed by Syrian rebels by Jaish al-Islam . In February 2020, it was alleged that the body was excavated in a mass grave by the Syrian government with hands tied behind the back. Evidence such as DNA results has not yet been provided.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kristin Helberg : The Salafist and the human rights activist. Adopt a Revolution , December 10, 2014, accessed January 3, 2015 .
  2. ↑ Human rights officer calls for the release of Razan Zeitouneh and colleagues. Foreign Office Germany, December 9, 2014, accessed on January 3, 2015 .
  3. ↑ Susanne Fischer : A year ago, Razan Zeitouneh was kidnapped in Syria. Der Tagesspiegel, December 9, 2014, accessed on January 3, 2015 .
  4. ↑ a b Human rights activist arrested. taz.de, December 2013, accessed on January 4, 2015 .
  5. ↑ Prize winners of the Petra Kelly Prize 2014. Heinrich Böll Foundation, November 27, 2014, accessed on January 4, 2015 .
  6. ^ Reporters Without Borders eV: Heroes of Freedom of the Press. Retrieved February 3, 2018 .
  7. ↑ Syria: No news on four kidnapped activists. Amnesty International Section Germany, December 9, 2014, accessed January 4, 2015 .
  8. ↑ Andrea Böhm : No sign of life from Razan Zeitouneh yet. Die Zeit, December 11, 2013, accessed on January 2, 2015 .
  9. ↑ Free Razan Zaitouneh. EMMA, May 2014, accessed January 3, 2015 .
  10. ↑ Markus Bickel: In the hands of Al Qaida. Kidnapped human rights activist. FAZ, December 17, 2013, accessed on January 3, 2015 .
  11. ↑ It is a voice of the Syrian opposition in FAZ from December 9, 2014, page 13
  12. ↑ Within Syria: Abu Turab al-Urduni, a senior commander of HTS in eastern Ghouta, who also headed a joint investigation branch, Sharia court with Jaysh al-Islam, was directly involved in the decision to execute activist, Razan Zaituna, and her mates.pic.twitter.com/jbXkhl0sEZ. In: @WithinSyriaBlog. April 22, 2019, accessed February 18, 2020 .
  13. ↑ Within Syria: The Syrian intellgince have recovered a body believed to be of opposition activists Razan Zituna. The body was found among 70 others in a mass grave in al-Ub farms in eastern Ghouta. The body's hands were tied to the back, it was an execution.https: //twitter.com/WithinSyriaBlog/status/1120369982494343168… In: @WithinSyriaBlog. February 16, 2020, accessed on February 18, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Zaitouneh, Razan
ALTERNATIVE NAMES رزان زيتونة (Arabic)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Syrian lawyer and journalist
DATE OF BIRTH April 29, 1977
PLACE OF BIRTH Syria