Syria’s new information minister promises free press

DAMASCUS – Syria’s Minister of Information in the country’s transitional government told AFP he is working towards a free press and is committed to “freedom of expression”, after decades of tight control under the country’s former rulers.

“We are working to consolidate freedoms of the press and expression that were severely restricted” in areas controlled by the

former Bashar al-Assad government,

said the minister, Mr Mohamed al-Omar, after Islamist-led rebels on Dec 8 ended more than five decades of rule by the Assad clan.

Syria’s ruling Ba’ath party and the Assad family dynasty heavily curtailed all aspects of daily life, including freedom of the press and expression with the media a tool of those in power.

Reporters Without Borders, a freedom-of-information watchdog, ranked Syria second-last on its 2024 World Press Freedom Index, ahead only of Eritrea and behind Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.

“There was a heavy restriction on freedom of the press and expression under the regime which practised censorship. In the period to come we are working on the reconstruction of a media landscape that is free, objective and professional,” Mr Omar said during an interview with AFP on Dec 31.

He is part of the

interim administration

installed in Damascus by the victorious rebel coalition led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).

The group has its origins in the Syrian branch of the jihadist group Al-Qaeda and is designated a terrorist organisation by numerous governments, but has sought to soften its image in recent years.

Diplomats from around the region and from the West have made contact with Syria’s new rulers, who have also vowed to protect the country’s religious and ethnic minorities.

Mr Omar was previously minister of information in the self-proclaimed Salvation Government, the civil administration set up in 2017 by HTS in the rebel holdout of Idlib province, in Syria’s north-west. It was from Idlib that the rebels began their lightning advance towards Damascus, 13 years into the country’s civil war.

After the conflict erupted in 2011 with the government’s brutal repression of pro-democracy protests, Mr Assad tightened restrictions on independent journalism.

“We don’t want to continue in the same way, that is, have an official media whose aim is to polish the image of the ruling power,” Mr Omar said.

Following

Mr Assad’s overthrow and flight to Moscow,

Syrian media outlets which had trumpeted his regime’s glories quickly adopted a revolutionary fervour.

On Dec 31, Mr Omar held an exchange with dozens of Syrian journalists to discuss the transition. AFP