Syria and the Press: How Syria's Culture is Breaking Out of Assad's Emergency Law

Media Law

With the death of political dictator Hafez Assad in 2000, free speech advocates in Syria and around the world dared to hope that the government's iron grasp on the press would loosen. Assad's son, Bashar Assad, replaced his father and gave his people reason to believe their hopes for open dialogue would be fulfilled. In his inaugural address, Assad told the people that he saw a need in his former father's government for "creative thinking, constructive criticism, transparency and democracy."[19] But hope was crushed less than a year later when a sheet of new laws issued forth from the minister's seat in Damascus, restricting the press in some areas even further than during his father's reign.

According to Syria's constitution, the country is a republic, guaranteeing the rights of free expression to its citizens.[20] But the totalitarian regime has found numerous, petty excuses to cover the constitution's mandates with concerns centering most often in national security and honor. Article 38 of the constitution states:

Every citizen has the right to freely and openly express his views in words, in writing, and through all other means of expression. He also has the right to participate in supervision and constructive criticism in a manner that safeguards the soundness of the domestic and nationalist structure and strengthens the socialist system. The state guarantees the freedom of the press, of printing, and publication in accordance with the law.[21]

The current enforcement of this constitutional mandate is almost completely non-existent today. Assad, supported by the majority political Ba'ath party, continues to follow his father's precedent in dealing with the media by using the State Emergency Law as an excuse for actions taken against journalists that under the constitution, would technically be considered illegal.[22]