Syrian Activists React to Outrage over Anti-Islam Film

Some Syrian activists expressed concern that their  Arab compatriots are more outraged over a film insulting the Prophet Muhammad than with the killing taking place in Syria.  An unnamed Syrian film director wrote, ”You killed an American Ambassador for a silly film but people are dying on the streets, women are being raped, Palestine is gone. All the ignorance and lack of knowledge in the Arab Muslim world is ok.  But ‘don’t touch the Prophet.”’ Shakeeb Jabri, a Syrian activist, voiced discontent over the perceived indifference toward Syrian civilians. ”One thing is clear, Syrians are quite pissed off at those who protested the Muhammad movie and not Assad’s shelling of mosques,” he said.

Syrian documentary filmmaker Orwa Nyrabia was released from custody on September 12. He was arrested at Damascus International Airport on August 23 while en route to Cairo, Egypt.  Nyrabia is well-known for his organization of the DOX BOX Festival, a forum which brings international documentaries to Syria. The details of his arrest have not been made public.

On September 11, Wikileaks published a further 32,000  emails from the Syrian Foreign Ministry. This leak adds to the more than 2 million documents that have been compiled as the “Syria Files,” which cover the period from August 2006 to March 2012. The information includes “the intimate correspondence of the most senior [governing] Baath party figures to records of financial transfers sent from Syrian ministries to other nations,” said Sarah Harrison, a spokesperson for Wikileaks.

Growing concern about human rights abuses on both sides of the conflict prompted General Robert Mood, the head of the U.N. monitoring team that left Damascus two months ago, to recommend that the international community refrain from supplying the rebels with more arms or money. After new videos surfaced that appear to show the aftermath of a “mass execution” by the opposition, U.N. Human Rights Chief Navi Pillay warned that such actions “may constitute war crimes or crimes against humanity.”