Syria asks foreign journalists to respect regulations
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E-mail Xinhua, February 23, 2012
The Syrian Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi urged on Thursday foreign journalists to respect regulations in Syria and avoid sneaking illegally into the country, a day after two foreign journalists were reportedly killed in restive Homs province.
In a statement carried by state-run SANA news agency, Makdissi said foreign journalists should respect all laws regulating the works of journalists in Syria and avoid violating laws by illegally entering into the Syrian territories and reaching unsecured and troubled places.
On Wednesday, two foreign journalists were killed when a bomb hit a media center in the Syrian city of Homs.
After the journalists' death, Syrian Information Minister Adnan Mahmoud said he was not aware of their presence in Syria and urged journalists who had entered the country illegally to "go to the nearest center... to regularize their status."
Meanwhile, Makdissi said that respecting Syrian laws would allow visiting journalists to get facilities and recommendations from the Information Ministry over the situation on the ground, adding that the ministry was exerting all-out efforts and had granted licenses to around 200 media delegations over the past two months.
The spokesman said the ministry offered its condolences to the families of journalists who were killed on the Syrian territories, while rejecting statements that held Syria responsible for the death of journalists who sneaked into the country without the notifying the Syrian authorities.
The two journalists killed Wednesday are French photographer Ochlik Remi, who was working for the magazine Paris-Match, and American journalist Marie Colvin, who was a special correspondent for the Sunday Times, French media reported.
Remi is the second French journalist that died in Syria. In January, French television reporter Gilles Jacquier was killed and became the first Western journalist to die in Syria since the anti- government protests erupted 11 months ago.
Last Thursday, Anthony Shadid, a Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent working for New York Times, died of an asthma attack after sneaking into Syria from Turkey and spending a week reporting from the restive northern province of Idlib.
The provinces of Homs and Idlib have been the main hotbeds of armed insurgency against the rule of Syrian President Bashar al- Assad.
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