The Aswatona Fund for Media Development, a 1.5m Euro multi-partner regional funding initiative to enhance independent media sector in the Maghreb and the Mashreq, was launched June 5.

This project is part of the European Union funded programme “Media and culture for development” which supports the efforts of the Southern Mediterranean countries’ in building deep-rooted democracy and to contribute to their sustainable economic, social and human development, through regional co-operation in the fields of media and culture.

Saturday 1 March 2014, by Bradley Castelli
Many were relieved when Western powers relented in their haste to intervene militarily in Syria back in September 2013. It was a chemical attack just outside of Damascus that served as the tipping point that threatened Western intervention, though such action was ultimately averted by Syria agreeing to establish a timetable through which it would eventually surrender its chemical arsenal. Since then the process to rid the country of its chemical weapons has evolved relatively slowly, though at a pace that is seemingly quicker than any progress being made at the conferences dedicated to negotiating a solution to the Syrian conflict.

As the regular army intensifies its attacks on Aleppo, it is targeting Syrian media and news providers. A citizen-journalist was shot dead by an army sniper yesterday and two news media were destroyed by army shelling last weekend.

Yesterday’s victim was Mohamed Ahmed Taysir Bellou (also known as Mohamed Al-Andani), who was the editor of Al-Shahba TV, a reporter for the Shahba Press agency and the Ahrar Souria brigade’s media bureau chief. An army sniper shot him in the neck as he was covering fighting near intelligence department offices in the Aleppo district of Lairmoon.