Wholesale violations by Tahrir al-Sham against journalists and media workers in Idlib

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) continues its violations of
freedom of information and the press in northern Syria’s Idlib governorate, the
latest of which was the arrest of journalist Abdullah Al-Omar for being close
to the country's government.
In its periodic report issued in March, the Syrian Center
for Journalist Freedoms in the Syrian Journalists Association (SJA) documented
twenty violations during the same month.
The report pointed out that the reality of the situation in
March was not different from what it was during the previous months, as HTS
constituted a main cause of most of the violations against the press documented
by the center during the first quarter of the current year.
Violations against the media
After dominating Idlib, HTS took the lead in violations of
the rights of media professionals and journalists, according to figures
documented by the Center for Journalist Freedoms.
Violations against media professionals have reached 575 in
the governorates of Aleppo and Idlib since 2011, according to the director of
the center, Ibrahim Hussein. He stressed that hardly a month passes without new
violations committed by HTS.
In the same context, Reporters Without Borders recently
issued a statement condemning the continuous threats made by HTS elements
against journalists.
Threats with voice messages
The statement emphasized that HTS threatens journalists with
voice messages on mobile phones, in addition to the ongoing attacks while
covering daily events in the governorate.
Following the statement by Reporters Without Borders, one of
the leaders of the organization broadcast an audio message on the Telegram
application bearing death threats to every journalist who criticizes HTS,
saying, “I swear by God, we will not leave a single journalist on the face of
Syria.”
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also confirmed that
HTS intentionally arrests journalists for allegedly violating security
checkpoints, and in fact it arrests them while performing their professional
duty.
The Observatory stated that HTS detained nearly 30
journalists but released them after they spent nearly two months imprisoned
with severe torture.
Wholesale violations
Journalists and media workers held a sit-in at Al-Sa'a
Square in the center of Idlib weeks ago to protest the beating and insulting of
a group of them by members of HTS while they were covering the passage of the
joint Turkish-Russian patrol on the M4 road near the city of Jericho, south of
Idlib.
HTS members insulted journalists and media professionals and
destroyed some of their equipment, and three journalists were detained for
hours last month in the town of Maarat al-Naasan in the northeastern
countryside of Idlib.
Last month, a journalist from the countryside of Hama was
attacked by HTS elements at one of its checkpoints west of Idlib.
The methods used by HTS against media professionals vary, as
it deliberately intimidates them in the context of the policy of imposing tutelage
on media work and the region and pursues anyone who violates its approach.