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Syria's minister of information in the country's transitional government vowed to work towards a free press and said it is committed to freedom of expression'.

Mohamed al-Omar announced that the new administration is 'working to consolidate freedoms of the press and expression that were severely restricted' under Bashar al-Assad's repressive regime.  

Syria's ruling Baath party and the Assad family dynasty heavily curtailed all aspects of daily life, including freedom of the press and expression with the media a tool of those in power.

Reporters Without Borders, a freedom of information watchdog, ranked Syria second-last on its 2024 World Press Freedom Index, ahead only of Eritrea and behind Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.

'There was a heavy restriction on freedom of the press and expression under the regime which practised censorship. In the period to come we are working on the reconstruction of a media landscape that is free, objective and professional,' Omar told AFP on Tuesday.

The announcement comes after a week of diplomatic engagements with representatives from around the region and from the West.

Officials from the US, UK and MENA countries have made contact with Syria's new rulers, who have also vowed to protect the country's religious and ethnic minorities.

Omar was previously minister of information in the self-proclaimed Salvation Government, the civil administration set up in 2017 by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham in the rebel holdout of Idlib province, in Syria's northwest. It was from Idlib that the rebels began their lightning advance towards Damascus, 13 years into the country's civil war.

After the conflict erupted in 2011 with the government's brutal repression of pro-democracy protests, Assad tightened restrictions on independent journalism.

'We don't want to continue in the same way, that is, have an official media whose aim is to polish the image of the ruling power,' Omar added.

Following Assad's overthrow and flight to Moscow, Syrian media outlets which had trumpeted his regime's glories quickly adopted a revolutionary fervour.

On Tuesday Omar held an exchange with dozens of Syrian journalists to discuss the transition.