Nayyouf was the target of attempted assassination in prison on three occasions, by a fight with another inmate and by arsenic poisoning as well as poisoning with other chemicals, which he survived in part because certain prison guards were sympathetic to him.
(meta data) TITLE: Syrian journalist Nizar Nayouf wins WAN Golden Pen of Freedom - IFEX (meta data) PUBLISHED DATETIME: 2016-08-09T19:10:08Z 5 captures 10 Dec 2011 - 10 May 2017 About this capture COLLECTED BY Organization: Internet Archive These crawls are part of an effort to archive pages as they are created and archive the pages that they refer to. That way, as the pages that are referenced are changed or taken from the web, a link to the version that was live when the page was written will be preserved. Then the Internet Archive hopes that references to these archived pages will be put in place of a link that would be otherwise be broken, or a companion link to allow people to see what was originally intended by a page's authors. The goal is to fix all broken links on the web. Crawls of supported "No More 404" sites. Collection: Wikipedia Near Real Time (from IRC) This is a collection of web page captures from links added to, or changed on, Wikipedia pages. 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The Wayback Machine - https://web.archive.org/web/20160809192848/https://www.ifex.org/international/1999/11/23/syrian_journalist_nizar_nayouf/ ## ISSUES: Access to Information Digital Rights Freedom of Assembly Free Expression & the Law ## REGIONS: SEE ALL Or browse by country: Burkina Faso Cape Verde Central African Republic Côte d'Ivoire Democratic Republic of Congo Equatorial Guinea Guinea-Bissau Republic of Congo São Tomé and Príncipe Sierra Leone South Africa South Sudan The Gambia SEE ALL Or browse by country: Antigua and Barbuda British Virgin Islands Cayman Islands Costa Rica Dominican Republic El Salvador Falkland Islands (United Kingdom) French Guiana (France) Netherlands Antilles Puerto Rico (United States) Saint Kitts and Nevis Saint Lucia Saint Vincent and Grenadines Trinidad and Tobago United States Asia & Pacific SEE ALL Or browse by country: American Samoa (United States) Cook Islands (New Zealand) East Timor French Polynesia (France) Guam (United States) Hong Kong (China) Kashmir (India) Marshall Islands New Caledonia (France) New Zealand Northern Mariana Islands (United States) North Korea Papua New Guinea Solomon Islands South Korea Sri Lanka Tibet (China) Wallis and Futuna (France) Europe & Central Asia SEE ALL Or browse by country: Bosnia and Herzegovina Chechnya (Russia) Czech Republic Kosovo (Serbia) Northern Ireland (United Kingdom) San Marino United Kingdom Middle East & North Africa SEE ALL Or browse by country: Saudi Arabia United Arab Emirates ## SUBSCRIBE: Sign up for weekly updates # Syrian journalist Nizar Nayouf wins WAN Golden Pen of Freedom World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers 23 November 1999 (WAN/IFEX) - The following is a WAN press release: Lisbon, 23 November 1999For immediate releasePress Freedom Prize Goes To Syrian JournalistNizar Nayouf, the Syrian press freedom and democracy advocate, has beenawarded the 2000 Golden Pen of Freedom, the annual press freedom prize ofthe World Association of Newspapers. Mr. Nayouf has been imprisoned in Syriasince 1992.The award, announced on Tuesday by the Board of the Paris-based WAN, wasmade in recognition of Mr. Nayouf's outstanding contribution to the cause ofpress freedom. In a statement, the Board said: "Nizar Nayouf is said to be near death dueto unspeakable torture and the effects of diseases for which he has beendenied adequate treatment. The Syrian regime has tried to break him, andthey have failed. Despite the appalling conditions in which he is beingdetained, Mr. Nayouf is continuing his fight for freedom of speech anddemocracy. His sacrifice is a reminder that freedom of speech can carry avery high price; he is an inspiration to publishers and journalistseverywhere. "The Board, which was meeting in Lisbon, renewed its call to Syrian PresidentHafez al-Assad to respect international conventions and release Mr. Nayoufand other journalists being held in prison. At least nine journalists arecurrently being held in prison in Syria ."His case, and others like it, should be raised by every country thatpursues political or business relations with the Syrian regime," the Boardsaid. Mr Nayyouf, Editor in Chief of Sawt al-Democratiyya (Democracy's Vote) andSecretary-General of the Committee for the Defence of Democratic Freedom inSyria, was arrested in 1992 and sentenced to ten years of forced labour forbeing a member of an "unauthorized" organization and for disseminating"false" information. Mr Nayyouf, 52, is confined to a tiny solitary cell and cannot walk, as hislegs are paralysed and his vertebrae fractured due to the repeated tortureby prison authorities. His sight is failing, following a fracture to theback of his head; burns from cigarettes stumped out on his skin have healedbadly and left him with dermatitis Mr Nayyouf is also suffering from lymphatic cancer, liver disease and ulcersbut is being denied full treatment. WAN recently learned three attempts have been made to kill Mr. Nayouf injail. The assassination attempts -- by poisoning with arsenic and otherchemicals, and by instigating a fight with another inmate -- have failed fora variety of reasons, including aid provided to Mr Nayouf by sympatheticjailers. He spent his first ten months of detention in Saydnaya prison, in thesuburbs of Damascus, where he attempted to organized a prisoners' rebellion. As punishment, prison authorities transferred him to the notorious militaryprison of Palmyre, in the Syrian desert. In protest at the torture inflicted on prisoners at Palmyre, Nizar Nayoufwent on a hunger strike for 13 days in 1993 which left him very weak. Numerous prisoners die under torture in Palmyre; Nizar Nayouf smuggled outevidence of this and was again transferred, as punishment, to the militaryprison of Mezze in Damascus, where he remains. The military authorities holding Nizar Nayouf have made it clear that hewill only receive additional medical treatment if he pledges to refrain frompolitical activity and signs a statement acknowledging that "he made falsedeclarations concerning the situation concerning human rights in Syria." Hecontinues to refuse to do so. WAN, the global association of the newspaper industry, has awarded theGolden Pen annually since 1961. Past winners include Argentina's JacoboTimerman (1980), who died earlier this month, Russia's Sergei Grigoryants(1989), China's Gao Yu (1995), and Vietnam's Doan Viet Hoat (1998). Lastyear's winner was Faraj Sarkohi of Iran. The association, which defends and promotes press freedom world-wide,represents 17,000 newspapers; its membership includes 61 national newspaperassociations, individual newspaper executives in 93 countries, 17 newsagencies and seven regional and world-wide press groups. POSTED IN: ##### ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ##### Case history #### Authorities' and ruling party members' harassment of Nayyouf's relatives continues International Press Institute 8 November 2001 #### WAN Golden Pen of Freedom awarded to imprisoned Syrian journalist Nizar Nayouf World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers 11 June 2000 #### RSF confirms that journalist remains imprisoned Reporters Without Borders 29 May 2000 See more ## Take Action! ### Send your support to the Cambodian Five Share your message of solidarity over Cambodian radio with imprisoned human rights defenders ## Latest Tweet: Political games in #Brazil threaten public broadcasting service https://t.co/44Tlrwc4P6 | @IFJGlobal @ebcnarede – 3:08 PM, 9 August 2016
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Nizar Nayyouf
Imprisonment.
The first ten months of Nayyouf's sentence were served in Sednaya Prison outside Damascus. While at Sednaya, Nayyouf tried to organize a prisoner revolt. He was moved to Palmyra prison near Tadmur. In 1993, Nayyouf went on a thirteen-day hunger strike at Palmyra in order to protest the torture of prisoners. While at Palmyra, Nayyouf was able to pass evidence that the prisoners were being tortured to the press outside, which led to another transfer to Mezzeh prison, a military prison outside Damascus. Most of his ten-year sentence was spent in solitary confinement in Mezzeh. 
 At Mezzeh prison, Nayyouf was subjected to various forms of torture including electrocution, beatings, and being hung upside down from his feet for two or three hours at a time. He was reportedly urinated on for refusing to Hafez al-Assad, then-President of Syria. Nayyouf was also subjected to the "German chair", a rack-like device designed to stretch the spines of prisoners.