Exiled Syrian writer honored for 'Diaries' of revolt

For more than three months, Samar Yazbek watched and took notes as the Arab Spring demonstrations in her native Syria were met with bloody force, CNN reports.
"When the Syrian regime's press began broadcasting lies about what was happening on the Syrian street, I found it absolutely necessary to document this stage and to talk about it candidly," Yazbek told CNN. She felt compelled to show "that these demonstrations were peaceful -- that this was not driven by sectarian strife as the regime would have us believe."
Her memoir of the early weeks of the conflict -- now a full-blown civil war that has claimed 28,000 lives, according to opposition activists -- earned her literary honors in exile this week.
Yazbek, who now lives in exile in Paris, accepted the PEN Pinter International Writer of Courage Award in London for her book "A Woman in the Crossfire: Diaries of the Syrian Revolution." She dedicated the award "to the martyrs of the Syrian revolution" and "those who move among the downpour of bullets and artillery fire, the tanks and the fighter jets, in order to carry on the revolution of the Syrian people toward establishing a free and democratic society."
When the government of President Bashar al-Assadunleashed police and army units on opposition protests in March 2011, Yazbek traveled to some of the hotbeds of the unrest and recorded how people were rising up against Syria's longtime rulers. She published a number of articles about the killing and arrest of peaceful demonstrators by the security forces, leading to what she described as a terrifying response from neighbors and family.
She received threatening letters and obscene telephone calls. Relatives and childhood friends publicly announced that she was "no longer considered one of them." Her daughter told her that in their Mediterranean coastal hometown of Jableh, flyers accusing her of being a foreign agent were being handed out.
Yazbek shared the prize with Britain's poet laureate, Carol Ann Duffy. In a statement released by PEN, Duffy praised Yazbeck for criticizing the government "when she is already such a prominent figure in Syria and so at increased risk."