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Government blocks access to two Kurdish-language websites

(RSF/IFEX) - RSF has condemned the Syrian government's blocking of two Kurdish-language websites, http://www.amude.com and http://www.qamislo.com, which carry news, pictures and video clips of demonstrations by the country's Kurdish minority.

The two websites are based in Germany. They were blocked for Syrian Internet users in mid-March 2004. Both websites are a major source of information for Kurds abroad and for foreign media outlets, which regularly use their photos and videos.

Syrian users now get an "access denied" message when they try to visit the websites. Amude.com Manager Siruan Hadsch-Hossein (whose pseudonym is Sirwan Heci Berko) said the authorities are able to block websites by blocking their domain names. At first, the content of Amude.com remained available at another address, http://www.amude.net, but that site has now been blocked as well.

RSF said it was "disgusted by the regime's authoritarian attitude and flagrant contempt for freedom of expression" and noted that a journalism student who was arrested in July 2003 for posting photographs on amude.com remains imprisoned. "The authorities have now gone a step further," the organisation noted.