Come clean, who is right? Thursday, 01 December 2011 05:37

During a press conference on Monday, Syria’s Foreign Minister Walid Muallem showed a video of, what he alleged to be a massacre committed by “armed terrorist groups” against the Syrian people.

Muallem accused these “armed terrorist groups” of waging a campaign of killing against civilians and army personnel with the aim of plunging the country into chaos. He then hit out at the Arab League for ignoring the presence of “terrorists” in the country and instead punishing the country by prematurely imposing sanctions against it.

The video footage of the “mass grave of security force martyrs” that, he said, was discovered by Syrian authorities and the bloodied and charred bodies of people who, he said, were killed by “terrorists groups” was so graphic that some TV channels covering the press conference blacked it out.

Our question to the Syrian government: If this be true, how come the Syrian army with its 304,000 active personnel and another 450,500 active reserves and hi-tech weapons and equipment is not able to deal with these groups of terrorists?

That only indicates that the situation Syria is facing is much worse than just armed terrorist groups creating havoc in the country.

It was not the first time I was seeing graphic images of violence in the news in Syrian media, but Monday’s still shocked me no end. Such disturbing images being shown in such a blatant and uncensored manner in a press conference addressed by the country’s foreign minister!

International human rights laws say all people have a right to privacy and dignity. Showing such horrific images to the public is a degradation of the victims’ rights to privacy and their personal dignity.

Moreover, young children with impressionable minds also watch television and one can imagine the affect such explicit videos and images can have on them.

By showing those images, the Syrian regime has pulled out all stops and using every weapon in its media arsenal to counteract the unfavourable media coverage that the regime has been getting over the past few months.

The Syrian media has started running documentaries about, what they say, is the misleading coverage by Al Jazeera and other satellite channels of the demonstrations happening in the country.

One of the examples they used in these documentaries was of a report by Al Jazeera showing the photo of a boy who was supposedly killed during one of the clashes between Syrian government forces and the protesters. Syrian media said that this photo was a fake and that the boy, they said, was the one killed in a conflict in Yemen a few months ago.

Another case they showed was a video showing people who were allegedly protesting in Syria but the video, they said was, actually from a different area.

This aggressive media campaign indicates that the Syrian regime has launched a media war against Al Jazeera.

However, Al Jazeera turned the table on the Syrian government when it reported that some of the images which Muallem showed during the press conference were fake and were taken from old footage.

One example Al Jazeera gave was the picture of a man who Muallem claimed was killed by the “terrorist groups” was in fact, according to it, was an old photo of an Egyptian man killed in Lebanon in 2010.

Another case it cited was the footage of “terrorist armed gangs” supposedly undergoing training was similar to a video taken in the areas of Jabal Mohsen in northern Lebanon two years ago.

By countering the Syrian government’s allegations, Al Jazeera can show to the world audience that the accusations are merely ploys by the Syrian regime in a desperate attempt to hold on to power.

However, we call on both the Syrian government and Al Jazeera to clarify the charges they have traded against each other. It is their responsibility to tell the public the truth.

Credibility and reputation are important for any organisation, whether it is media or government. If this credibility is tarnished or compromised in any way, it will be difficult for an organisation to gain the trust of the public it serves.

The Peninsula