le hamcat

futurejournalismproject:

Basil Al-Sayed, Who Chronicled The Syrian Uprising, Is Dead.

From NPR:

This was the last thing Basil al-Sayed, a citizen journalist in Syria, filmed before he was shot in the head by security forces:

According to activist Rami Jarrah, yesterday, al-Sayed succumbed to his injuries at a hospital in the restive city of Homs. He was 24.

“We have thousands of citizen journalists,” Jarrah told NPR’s Deb Amos. “But Basil was one of those who stood out.”

Jarrah said al-Sayed filmed security forces opening fire directly at protesters, and that put him at serious risk.

“He was documenting stuff that no one could actually get hold of,” Jarrah said. “I don’t want to say this was expected, but he was always in those situations where you could expect something would happen to him.”….

Foreign journalists have been mostly banned from entering Syria since a popular uprising against the rule of President Bashar Assad began in the country 10 months ago. In many cases, the videos uploaded to YouTube by citizen journalists have been the only way for the outside world to see the clashes that have cost more than 5,000 people their lives in Syria.