Syria was ranked the least free country in the world on the 2019 Freedom House’s list. President of the Syrian Coalition pointed out that the ranking should prompt the international community and those who are trying to rehabilitate the Assad regime to shoulder their responsibilities.
In its annual assessment of fundamental freedoms, the Washington-based rights group Freedom House singled out Syria as “worst of the worst” on its list of the least free countries.
President Mustafa said that supporters of the regime and those seeking to rehabilitate it are to blame for the ranking of Syria as worst of the worst. He said that this situation “should prompt everyone to shoulder their responsibilities.”
President Mustafa also criticized “the countries that have kept silent about the crimes and terror of the Assad regime as well as the massacres being committed by the regime and its allied militias against those who are demanding freedom.”
The Assad regime came first in terms of the violations against media workers over the past year, according to the annual report by the Syrian Centre for Journalistic Freedoms of the Syrian Journalists Association.
According to a report the Association published on late January 2019, the violations included murder, physical assault, detention, torture, preventing journalists from working freely, confiscation of the equipment of media institutions, and shutting down media institutions.
Moreover, the Assad regime was found responsible for killing US journalist Marie Colvin in 2012.
The US district court for the District of Columbia on late January ruled that the Assad regime was liable to pay $302m in damages to Colvin’s family who filed a lawsuit against the regime for its responsibility for her death when regime forces shelled a media center in the neighborhood of Baba Amr in Homs back in February 2012. (Source: Syrian Coalition’s Media Department)
