Syria withdraws accreditation of British media BBC, a rare step

Syria announced on Saturday July 8 that it had withdrawn the accreditation of the BBC, the British public media, accusing it of publishing “biased information and reporting”, a rare measure against an international media in this war-torn country.

“Due to the channel’s failure to uphold professional standards and its stubbornness to provide politicized and biased information and reporting,” the Ministry of Information decided to“cancel accreditation” BBC and BBC Radio correspondents, he wrote in a statement. The British group did not react immediately.

Few media still on site

“Despite repeated warnings” to the chain, she has “continued to disseminate misleading information based on statements (…) by terrorist and anti-Syria entities”accused the ministry.

Since its outbreak in 2011, the civil war in Syria has claimed more than half a million lives and displaced several million people. Many foreign journalists left the country as the war escalated. Withdrawal of accreditation from international media representatives remains rare in Damascus, where the few remaining foreign media outlets have local correspondents on site.