Zainab al-Hosni, dubbed the “Flower of Syria,” who the Syrian opposition claimed was tortured and murdered, burned and decapitated, by the Syrian government, has just appeared on Syrian TV, very much alive. Here is the video of the TV interview with Zainab, who says she fled from her family home because her brothers were beating her:
The case of opposition propaganda about Zainab al-Hosni is particularly noteworthy because this is one that Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, the most influential human rights organizations, both eagerly seized upon, seeking to turn its sensationalist character into a spur to prod the UN Security Council to act against Syria.
Will AI and HRW, and mass media such as CNN, France24, and the Associated Press, which followed the human rights organizations and also uncritically promulgated the Syrian opposition claim, issue corrections? Or will they continue looking for a new Syrian opposition remake of Kuwait’s “incubator babies” story or the Libyan rebels’ “African mercenaries” story?
Yoshie Furuhashi is the editor of MRZine.
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