WASHINGTON: Chat platforms like WhatsApp and Telegram have avoided being blocked by Russia — unlike some of the world’s biggest social networks — in a tenuous tolerance that experts warn could end suddenly.
Years of tension between Moscow and US-based Facebook and Twitter erupted into confrontation after the invasion of Ukraine, with the platforms targeting state-tied media and then finding themselves restricted in Russia.
YouTube, which has barred channels linked to Russian state media globally, was on Friday also facing a direct threat of being blocked after Russia’s media regulator, Roskomnadzor, accused the site’s owner Google of being “anti-Russian.”
Messaging apps, however, have gotten a pass so far in part because Meta-owned WhatsApp is less suited for mass communication, while Telegram’s ability to blast information to large groups has made it useful both for independent media and the Kremlin.
“I think it’s unlikely Russia will ban Telegram because they are so short on platforms where they can operate,” said Sergey Sanovich, a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton University, who noted that authorities in 2020 aborted efforts to block the service.
Telegram, criticized as having a lax content policing policy, offers a forum for Russian authorities to promote narratives friendly to their internationally condemned war.
Russia still operates accounts on platforms like Facebook, despite blocking the service at home, but this week the Silicon Valley giant took down posts from Moscow’s pages that contained misinformation about its deadly offensive.
Telegram has become an essential exchange for news on the war, with its growth accelerating after the Kremlin’s latest crackdown on independent media and the lock-out of apps like Facebook and Instagram.
An average of 2.5 million new users joined Telegram daily in the last three weeks, the firm said, about a 25 percent jump from the weeks prior.
But experts highlighted a risk to Telegram and its users due to a lack of default, end-to-end encryption that potentially leaves the company susceptible to government pressure to turn over information.
Alp Toker, director of web monitoring group NetBlocks, noted WhatsApp has put in place firestops that offer insulation against that sort of pressure.
“By improving their security and adopting end-to-end encryption technology, they have essentially protected their own platform from legal risk and potential demands for content access requests,” Toker added.
WhatsApp’s use for one-on-one or group chats make it less of a target for Russian authorities for now, but that could change if it became known as a key platform for protests against the war.
“Primarily, Roskomnadzor has been very concerned about channels and news and ways of disseminating information to large numbers of people, which WhatsApp and such are less good for,” said Eva Galperin, director of cybersecurity at Electronic Frontier Foundation.
But Toker noted that the question hasn’t reached a critical point yet for authorities, partly because it was social media platforms, many of them now blocked, that had played a key role in organizing.
“As those (platforms) disappear, the dynamics could change and messaging apps could become the next target,” he added.
WhatsApp was one of the most popular apps in Russia in 2021, with some 67 million users or about 65 percent of Internet users in the country — far ahead of TikTok, Russian social media platform VK, and even Telegram, according to data from eMarketer.
But YouTube, with 76 million viewers in 2021, drew more Russians than any of the above platforms, the data showed.
Its popularity was due in part to the access it offers to entertainment for everyday Russians, who in turn provided an audience for politicians and the government seeking their attention.
Sanovich, the Princeton researcher, said the platform had simply gotten on the wrong side of authorities.
“They have a hard time controlling YouTube in terms of censorship and YouTube’s recent moves made it less valuable as a venue for foreign propaganda,” he noted.
The lack of a sufficiently high-quality homegrown alternative has also been a complicating factor for the government in deciding what to do with YouTube.
Toker, the NetBlocks director, cautioned that the blocking of YouTube would mean confronting Google, with its suite of services like Gmail.
“Declaring war on YouTube effectively means declaring war on the rest of the company,” he noted. “Google is a major force in business and a significant connection to the outside world.”
Last apps standing? Telegram, WhatsApp duck Russia bans
https://arab.news/g6zgz
Last apps standing? Telegram, WhatsApp duck Russia bans
- Meta-owned WhatsApp is less suited for mass communication
- An average of 2.5 million new users joined Telegram daily in the last three weeks
Syrian Al-Jazeera presenter returns to post-Assad Hama after 12 years in exile
- Fakhouri, a former presenter at the Syrian TV station, fled the country in 2012 after tight censorship
- He was interrogated by the State Security Department over revolution coverage
DUBAI: Syrian Al-Jazeera presenter Ahmad Fakhouri received an overwhelming welcome from crowds of hundreds of people as he returned to his hometown Hama after 12 years in exile.
In a video posted on his social media channels, Fakhouri is seen waving at huge crowds who gathered in the streets in a collective moment of celebration after the fall of Bashar Assad’s regime.
“Come to us, Fakhouri,” people were seen cheering and chanting in the video which Fakhouri captioned “The people of Hama. None but you are my family and my support.”
Fakhouri, a former presenter at the Syrian TV station, fled the country in 2012 after tight censorship was placed on the media during the days of the revolution.
During a 2013 interview with Al Jazeera, Fakhouri said he was not allowed to cover the protests, then later was asked to use derogatory terms, such as “terrorists, infiltrators, and enemies of the homeland,” to describe the demonstrators.
“I was naive enough to ask Bouthaina Shaaban (media advisor to the Syrian Presidency) during high-level meetings to allow us to conduct interviews with the opposition, thinking that Syrian television belonged to the people and not to a specific faction,” Fakhouri had told Al Jazeera at the time.
He also reported being under constant surveillance from security and intelligence officers as a presenter.
Rejecting the regime’s policies that insisted on denying the protests, Fakhouri said he refrained from presenting live news, limiting his work to the weekly news bulletin. When he first decided to leave Syria, he discovered he was banned from travelling.
Shortly afterwards, he was summoned for an interrogation at the State Security Department, facing charges of inciting sectarian divisions and cooperating with foreign entities to disrupt public security. He was also accused of receiving money from his expatriate brother “to fund armed terrorists.”
He reported being blindfolded, and hearing “sounds of torture” and insults directed at detainees across from his interrogation room.
When he was released at the request of the media minister, Fakhouri decided to head to Aleppo where he hid for several months before the Free Syrian Army facilitated his escape.
“I do not need to mention why I decided to leave the regime's grip as everyone is aware of Assad’s crimes against the Syrian people,” said Fakhouri, noting that several of his media colleagues were detained over extended periods, including some who were died under torture.
“I can confirm that most of those working in Syrian media are looking for an opportunity to escape like I did.”
Fakhouri begun his journey in the media at the state radio in 2004 before moving to become a presenter in the Syrian TV.
After he left Syria, he became known for hosting the “Trending” news bulletin at BBC Arabic until he joined Al Jazeera as a presenter and documentary maker in 2022.
Fakhouri was among many Syrian expats who returned to a nation where jubilation took over since Assad’s iron-fisted regime was toppled by a lightning 11-day rebel offensive spearheaded by the Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham group on Dec. 8.
Since the fall of Assad’s five-decade dynastic rule, harrowing accounts of torture and executions of political prisoners, activists, and regime critics in state prisons — most notably the infamous Sednaya — have emerged publicly.
Media group urges release of detained South Sudan journalist
- Emmanuel Monychol Akop, editor-in-chief of local The Dawn newspaper, has not been seen since November 28
NAIROBI: South Sudan has detained a leading journalist, an international media organization said Friday as it urged his immediate release.
News of the apparent arrest followed a warning by the United Nations which denounced arbitrary detentions, including those of opposition party members or individuals associated with them.
Emmanuel Monychol Akop, editor-in-chief of local The Dawn newspaper, has not been seen since November 28, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
The international monitoring group said he had been detained by National Security Services (NSS) agents, citing his colleagues and an individual familiar with his case, who said he had been summoned to the organization’s headquarters in capital Juba.
“South Sudanese authorities must bring editor Emmanuel Monychol Akop before a court, present credible charges or release him unconditionally,” said Angela Quintal, head of CPJ’s Africa program.
She said the NSS had a “reputation for running roughshod over the rights of journalists,” adding that this detention “further tarnishes an already dismal press freedom record.”
Manager at The Dawn newspaper Moses Guot told the CPJ there were worries about Akop’s security.
“They should allow us to see him, at least to know about his health, and that would be a good start,” he said.
Akop was also detained in 2019 following a Facebook post criticizing a minister’s appearance during a diplomatic visit. He was held for a month before being released.
The arrest comes weeks after gunfire broke out at the home of a recently sacked intelligence chief, spooking many in the young country which since independence has grappled with insecurity.
In September South Sudan once again postponed the first elections in the nation’s history, pushing them back another two years.
South Sudan is one of the poorest countries on the planet despite large oil reserves and ranks 177 out of 180 countries on Transparency International’s corruption perceptions index.
Two journalists killed in north Syria by ‘Turkish drone’
- Nazim Dastan, 32, and Cihan Bilgin, 29, were killed near the Tishrin dam east of Alepp
- The pair worked for Syrian Kurdish media outlets Rojnews and the Anha news agency
BEIRUT: Two journalists from Turkiye’s mainly Kurdish southeast have been killed, reportedly by a Turkish drone, while covering the fighting between an Ankara-backed militia and US-backed Kurdish fighters in Syria, journalists’ groups said Friday.
Nazim Dastan, 32, and Cihan Bilgin, 29, were killed on Thursday near the Tishrin dam east of Aleppo when their car was hit, the Dicle Firat Journalists’ Association said.
“We condemn this attack on our colleagues and demand accountability,” it said.
The pair worked for Syrian Kurdish media outlets Rojnews and the Anha news agency.
The Turkish Journalists Union also condemned the attack, saying they were “allegedly targeted by a Turkish UAV,” the technical name for a drone.
“We condemn the attack. Journalists cannot be subjected to attack while performing a sacred duty. Those responsible must be found and tried,” the union’s branch in the southeastern Kurdish-majority city of Diyarbakir said.
The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said two journalists had been killed in Aleppo province by a “Turkish drone strike.”
The pro-Kurdish Mezopotamya news agency also blamed a Turkish drone.
The Turkish army insists it never targets civilians but only terror groups.
The incident comes amid mounting concerns over a possible Turkish assault on the Kurdish-held Syrian border town of Kobani, also known as Ain Al-Arab.
Ankara is hoping Syria’s new Islamist HTS rulers will take steps to address the issue of Kurdish fighters in the north.
“If they address this issue properly, there would be no reason for us to intervene,” Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said this week.
Turkiye pushed for Assad’s ouster when the Syrian conflict erupted in 2011 with the violent suppression of peaceful protesters.
But after backing various opposition groups, Turkiye more recently shifted its focus to blocking what President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 2019 dubbed a “terror corridor” in northern Syria, meaning the large area controlled by the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces, which is backed by the US.
A Turkish defense ministry source on Thursday said Ankara would push ahead with its military preparations until Kurdish fighters “disarm,” stressing the ongoing threat along its border with Syria.
Israel media report accuses troops of indiscriminate killing of Gaza civilians
- Haaretz quoted soldiers, career officers and reservists who said commanders were given unprecedented authority to operate in the Gaza Strip
- Batallion commander: ‘Anyone crossing the line is a terrorist — no exceptions, no civilians. Everyone’s a terrorist’
JERUSALEM: A leading Israeli newspaper, citing unnamed soldiers serving in Gaza, described indiscriminate killings of Palestinian civilians in the territory’s Netzarim Corridor, prompting a firm rejection Friday from the military.
Haaretz, a left-leaning Israeli daily that has faced severe criticism from the country’s right-wing government, quoted soldiers, career officers and reservists who said commanders were given unprecedented authority to operate in the Gaza Strip.
They alleged commanders had ordered or allowed the killing of unarmed women, children and men in the Netzarim Corridor, a seven-kilometer-wide (4.3-mile-wide) strip of land that cuts across Gaza from Israel to the Mediterranean, and which has been turned into a military zone.
The report quoted an officer who recalled an incident in which a commander had announced that 200 militants were killed, when actually “only 10 were confirmed as known Hamas operatives.”
Soldiers meanwhile told Haaretz they received questionable orders to open fire on “anyone who enters” Netzarim.
“Anyone crossing the line is a terrorist — no exceptions, no civilians. Everyone’s a terrorist,” a soldier quoted a battalion commander as saying.
The soldiers also described how division commanders received “expanded powers” allowing them to bomb buildings or launch air strikes that previously required approval from the army’s top echelons.
The allegations contained in the Haaretz report could not be independently verified.
In a statement to AFP, the military rejected the accusations.
“All activities and operations conducted by (Israeli army) forces in the Gaza Strip, including in the Netzarim Corridor, are carried out in accordance with structured combat procedures, plans and operational orders approved by the highest ranks in the (army),” it said.
The military added that “all strikes in the area (of Netzarim) are conducted in accordance with the mandatory procedures and protocols, including targets that are struck in an urgent time frame due to essential operational circumstances where ground forces face immediate threats.”
“Incidents that give rise to concerns of deviations from IDF’s orders or ethical standards are thoroughly examined and addressed.”
Many soldiers who spoke to Haaretz pointed to a specific commander, Brig. Gen. Yehuda Vach, who last summer took charge of Division 252, which has been based in Netzarim.
One of the soldiers said of Vach — who was born in the settlement of Kiryat Arba in the occupied West Bank — that “his worldview and political positions were clearly driving his operational decisions.”
Another soldier said Vach had declared “there are no innocents in Gaza.”
The military said that the “statements attributed to him... were not made by him.”
“Any claim asserting otherwise is entirely baseless.”
The Haaretz report said Israeli soldiers spoke to the newspaper so that the Israeli “people need to know how this war really looks like, and what serious acts some commanders and fighters are committing inside Gaza.”
“They need to know the inhuman scenes we’re witnessing.”
Palestinian militant group Hamas, whose unprecedented October 7, 2023 attack on Israel sparked the current war, also reacted to the Haaretz report.
It said the testimonies offered “new evidence of unprecedented war crimes and full-fledged ethnic cleansing operations, carried out in an organized manner.”
Hamas, which has also been accused of indiscriminate killings of Israelis and other civilians on October 7 last year, demanded that the United Nations and the International Court of Justice “document these testimonies and take the necessary steps to stop the ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip.”
‘No longer afraid’: Journalists drop pseudonyms as Syrians reclaim voices after Assad’s fall
- Many Syrian journalists resorted to false names for fear of reprisals
- ‘Using a fake name was to many Syrians part of suppressing their identity,’ London-based Zouhir Masri tells Arab News
LONDON: Syrian journalists, long silenced in the shadow of the oppressive regime of Bashar Assad, are beginning to shed their pseudonyms and reclaim their real names in a symbolic act of liberation following the tyrant’s fall.
During Syria’s descent into chaos in 2012, many journalists and activists adopted pseudonyms to protect themselves and their families from the regime’s brutal retaliation. For years, speaking out meant risking persecution, imprisonment, or worse.
Zouhir Masri, a London-based journalist formerly known as Zouhir Al-Shimale, said: “In the past, activists and journalists used to use pseudonyms to cover their identity for safety reasons since most of them, including me, had their family members stuck in Syria and unable to leave.”
Masri explained to Arab News: “Now that Syria is free, lots of people have started to use their real names which were suppressed and kept hidden out of fear of retaliation from the Assad regime’s security forces.”
Masri, who fled his home in Aleppo in 2018 after the regime’s chemical attacks, is one of many journalists now revealing their true identities.
Prominent figures such as Malath Assaf, director of programs for the unofficially rebel-affiliated Aleppo Today, and Rami Jarrah, previously known by the pseudonym Alexander Page, are now openly discussing Syria’s future without fear of reprisal.
One journalist, Manal Al-Sahwi, who investigated Syria’s illicit Captagon trade and its links to the Assad family, shared her story on Facebook earlier this month.
She wrote: “For years, I wrote more than 150 articles in addition to my daily work on the Daraj website. I thought my name would be hidden forever. I worked on dozens of investigations, human rights reports, blogs and opinion articles, believing the truth must be told, even if we remain in the shadows.”
Revealing she had used the pseudonym Carmen Karim, she added: “I only hope that I will never return to writing under a pseudonym again.”
The Syrian Network for Human Rights has reported that at least 717 journalists and media workers were killed between March 2011 and May 2024, while 1,358 were arrested or kidnapped.
Even those who fled abroad often lived under the looming fear of the regime’s long reach.
“It is well known that the regime did not only target individuals but also relatives. Therefore, we could never work under our real names. Personally, I didn’t have the courage to do it,” Assaf said in a recent interview.
However, it was not only journalists who had been silenced in Assad’s regime.
For years many ordinary citizens resorted to pseudonyms when sharing their stories with the media, fearing the regime’s ruthless reprisals.
Now, following Assad’s fall, they are walking the streets of Damascus with a renewed sense of freedom and reclaiming their right to express themselves openly.
“Finally, I am no longer afraid to express my opinion. I was scared to speak about anything related to the country, even if it wasn’t related to politics. This was the case of every Syrian living in the republic of fear,” said Shifaa Sawan, previously known as Suham Al-Ali, a teacher in Damascus, in an interview with Berlin-based Syria Direct.
“The sunrise was different that first day. It was not like the days before the regime fell. I walked through Bab Touma, Al-Qaymariya, Al-Maliki and Umayyad Square. I went to the Presidential Palace, repeating (Abdul Baset) Al-Sarout’s song ‘Janna Janna Janna, Ghali ya Watanna’.”
As the world watches to learn what the future holds for Syria and its people, the fall of Assad’s regime has brought a renewed sense of hope. Citizens are reclaiming their identities, removing their metaphorical gags, and shouting their long-suppressed voices.
“Using a fake name was to many Syrians part of suppressing their identity and who they really are as (a) Syrian,” said Masri. “Now this is no longer the case.”
