Razan Zaitouneh | |
---|---|
رزان زيتونة | |
Born | |
Disappeared | 9 December 2013 (aged 36) [1] Douma, Syria [1] |
Status | Missing for 11 years and 14 days [2] |
Education | Law degree |
Occupation | Human rights lawyer |
Organization(s) | Local Coordination Committees of Syria, [1] Violations Documentation Center in Syria [1] |
Known for | human rights activism during the civil uprising and early insurgency phases of the Syrian Civil War [1] |
Razan Zaitouneh (sometimes spelled Zeitunah; Arabic : رزان زيتونة; born 29 April 1977) is a Syrian human rights lawyer and civil society activist. Actively involved in the Syrian uprising, she went into hiding after being accused by the government of being a foreign agent [3] and her husband was arrested. [4] Zaitouneh has documented human rights in Syria for the Local Coordination Committees of Syria. [5] Zaitouneh was kidnapped on 9 December 2013, most likely by Jaysh al-Islam. Her fate remains unknown. It is suspected that she has been killed. [1] [2]
Zaitouneh graduated from law school in Damascus in 1999 and in 2001 started her work as a lawyer.[ citation needed ]
She has been a member of the team of lawyers for defense of political prisoners since 2001. In the same year, Razan was one of the founders of the Human Rights Association in Syria (HRAS). In 2005, Razan Zaitouneh established SHRIL (the Syrian Human Rights Information Link), through which she continues to report about human rights violations in Syria. From 2005 through to her 2013 disappearance, Razan Zaitouneh was an active member of the Committee to Support Families of Political Prisoners in Syria.
Syrian State television aired announcement that Razan Zaitouneh was a foreign agent on 23 March 2011, after which she went into hiding while continuing her legal and human rights work, in order to avoid being arrested. [6]
Zaitouneh founded the Violations Documentation Center in Syria in April 2011 to document human rights violations and abuses in the country by all sides. [7] She also contributed to human rights violations reports circulated by the Local Coordination Committees of Syria, [5] of which she was one of the founders. [1]
Her husband, Wael Hamadeh (or Wael Hamada, or Wa'el Hammada) was arrested on 12 May 2011. His brother 'Abd al-Rahman Hammada was also arrested. Wael Hamadeh was questioned in prison about his wife's human rights work, then Wael Hamadeh released on 1 August 2011. [8]
On 27 October 2011, she was awarded the 2011 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of thought, jointly with four other Arabs. [9] She was previously awarded the Anna Politkovskaya Award by Reach All Women in War. [10] In 2013 Razan Zaitouneh was granted the International Women of Courage Award. [11]
Pro-opposition websites reported that on 9 December 2013 Zaitouneh had been kidnapped along with her husband, Wael Hamadeh, and two colleagues, Samira Khalil and Nazem Hammadi, in the opposition-held town of Douma to the north of Damascus. [12] [13] [14] As of December 2015, their whereabouts were still unknown and the identity of the kidnappers uncertain, although it was suspected that the Islamist Salafi rebel group Jaysh al-Islam was responsible. [15] [7]
As of August 2018 [update] , the Associated Press (AP) was unaware of significant evidence for Zaitouneh's fate. AP stated clues suggesting that Jaysh al-Islam had detained Zaitouneh and held her in Tawbeh Prison. Jaysh al-Islam denied the claim. [1] One clue was a graffito seen by several witnesses on a prison cell wall stating, "I miss my mother – Razan Zaitouneh, 2016." Another clue was the use of one of the Violations Documentation Center computers, taken together with Zaitouneh in the December 2013 kidnapping, from a Jaysh al-Islam IP address at Tawbeh Prison. Another opposition activist, Mazen Darwish, stated that Zaitouneh was held by Jaysh al-Islam until early 2017. [1] AP judged it likely that Zaitouneh had been killed. [1]
On 17 February 2020, one of the Syrian intelligence agencies declared that it had discovered a mass grave in al-Ub around the eastern Ghouta district, containing around 70 bodies. Russian sources speculated that of them appeared to be that of Razan Zaitouneh.[ citation needed ]
In 2020, French authorities arrested Majdi Mustapha Nameh (Islam Alloush) in relation to Zaitouneh's disappearance. [16]
In March 2021, a criminal complaint was filed in France by the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression, holding Jaysh al-Islam responsible for her abduction. [2]
In July 2022, a clue reported by Deutsche Welle was that two months after the abduction, a member of Jaysh al-Islam had used Zaitouneh's computer to log on to her social media accounts. The computer had been given to Zaitouneh through a project funded by the United States Department of State, enabling geolocation and identification of the user. The Deutsche Welle investigation suggested that the abduction had been masterminded by two local Jaysh al-Islam leaders, Abu Qusai al-Dirani and Samir Kaakeh. When the leader of Jaysh al-Islam at the time, Zahran Alloush, learnt about the abduction, he tried to negotiate an agreement to free her and three other abductees. However, Zahran Alloush was killed in a Russian airstrike. His successor and cousin, Mohammed Alloush, refused to continue the proposals for a deal. [16]
The Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, commonly known as the Sakharov Prize, is an honorary award for individuals or groups who have dedicated their lives to the defence of human rights and freedom of thought. Named after Russian scientist and dissident Andrei Sakharov, the prize was established in December 1988 by the European Parliament.
Natalya Khusainovna Estemirova was a Russian human rights activist and board member of the Russian human rights organization Memorial. Estemirova was abducted by unknown persons on 15 July 2009 around 8:30 a.m. from her home in Grozny, Chechnya, as she was working on "extremely sensitive" cases of human rights abuses in Chechnya. Two witnesses reported they saw Estemirova being pushed into a car shouting that she was being abducted. Her remains were found with bullet wounds in the head and chest area at 4:30 p.m. in woodland 100 metres (330 ft) away from the federal road "Kavkaz" near the village of Gazi-Yurt, Ingushetia.
Asmaa Mahfouz is an Egyptian activist and one of the founders of the April 6 Youth Movement. She has been credited by journalist Mona Eltahawy and others with helping to spark a mass uprising through her video blog posted one week before the start of the 2011 Egyptian revolution. She is a prominent member of Egypt's Coalition of the Youth of the Revolution and one of the leaders of the Egyptian revolution.
Adra Prison was a prison in Syria, on the northeast outskirts of Damascus. Political prisoners are held in the prison, along with a mixture of civil prisoners such as traffic offenders, murderers, and drug dealers. In 2014, the prison held more than 7,000 inmates, a dozen of them women, in space designed for 2,500. The Washington Post referred to the prison as "infamous".
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Dr. Razan Ghazzawi, is a Syrian-Palestinian blogger, campaigner, teacher, and activist, originally from Homs in Syria and Gaza in Palestine. Ghazzawi finished their PhD in Gender Studies and International Relations at the University of Sussex. They currently work as a tenure-track assistant professor in Queer Studies at Oregon State University, USA, since September 2023. Ghazzawi has been highly involved as a dissident since they started blogging in 2005, and weaponized their blogging to disseminate information about Syrian regime human rights violations following the 2011 Syrian Uprising. Ghazzawi has been particularly outspoken on activists' arrests and the violations of human rights committed by the Bashar al-Assad government, as well as on the sectarianism, Arab racism, and transphobia and homophobia towards Syrian ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities within Syrian cisgender and straight activist communityand opposition in diaspora and exile. Ghazzawi was called "iconic blogger and leading activist" by The Telegraph. Jillian York wrote that Ghazzawi was "one of [their] heroes."
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The Violations Documentation Center in Syria is a network of Syrian opposition activists whose aim is to document human rights violations perpetrated since the beginning of the Syrian Civil War, including victims of the violence, detainees, and missing people. The organization works with the activists from the Local Coordination Committees of Syria, and documents identified victims of the violence from the rebels and the civilians. The stated purpose of the organization is to provide an independent documentation of human rights violations within Syria, a resource that may help any future justice-related procedures. The center's main sources of information include medical records, families of the victims and information received from the Imam of the mosque that performed the burial.
Jaysh al-Islam, formerly known as Liwa al-Islam, is a coalition of Islamist rebel units involved in the Syrian Civil War.
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