Razan Ghazzawi
Razan Ghazzawi is a tireless defender of human rights, not only in her native Syria but throughout the Arab world and beyond. She is an active blogger who also works for the SCM advocating for journalists and bloggers under threat in Syria and the rest of the region. She has stood up for minority rights, including LGBT rights in the Arab world, Palestinian equal rights, and most recently, has fought hard for the Syrian revolution, to her own peril. She is constantly reviewing her points of view, and constantly rethinking and re-imagining how best to be an advocate.
Razan Ghazzawi is a Syrian human rights defender and blogger who has been at the forefront of promoting freedom of expression and a free media in her country. Following several threats she was arrested for the first time on 4th December 2011 at the Syrian-Jordanian border as she was on her way to attend a workshop on media and freedom of expression in the Arab world. She was released after two weeks.
The situation for human rights defenders (HRDs) in Syria has rapidly deteriorated since the beginning of the government's violent crackdown against nation-wide peaceful protests in 2011. HRDs, who already faced significant difficulties in remaining active under a highly repressive regime, have since been at even higher risk of direct targeting and persecution, including arbitrary arrest and detention, malicious prosecution, death threats, restrictions on their freedom of movement, abduction, defamation, and other forms of harassment and intimidation.
