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The Vision of the Local Coordination Committees on International Protection

par لجان التنسيق المحلية في سوريا, mercredi 2 novembre 2011, 07:05

More than eight months have passed on the Syrian Revolution. Entire towns and villages have moved against a state of despair and absence of hope, due to the rampant mishandling of public affairs by the Syrian regime on all levels, and in particular on the political level. Thousands of citizens demonstrate each day, as part of grassroots social movements, using all forms of peaceful demonstration. They claim rupture from the existing authoritarian and family-based system of government, and they aspire to lay the foundations for the values of freedom and dignity to all citizens in Syria. The Syrian regime has confronted this revolution of values with an insistence on unaccountability, an attempt to stir up strife among the various components of society, and the use of the most repulsive forms of repression.

Every day tens are killed by the Syrian regime’s security and military apparatus and by the regime’s thugs. Every day, hundreds are wounded, arrested and tortured, and similar numbers are deemed disappeared. Reports of the United Nations and other international human rights organizations have recorded various types of systematic violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, against peaceful demonstration. These include willful killing of demonstrators including children; imprisonment and other severe deprivation of physical liberty; torture and inhumane treatment; enforced disappearance of persons; and other inhuman acts intentionally causing great suffering to civilians, such as directing attacks against hospitals and the arrest, torture and killing of the wounded therein; and directing attacks against religious building and dwellings. Such reports have established that such acts are committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against civilian populations in Syria, with knowledge of the attack, and that they may therefore amount to crimes against humanity.

Considering the grave and systematic violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, including through the violent repression of peaceful demonstrators, directly and indirectly by the Syrian authorities, with incitement by the regime’s media outlets, and the prohibition of independent and international press from working in the country, we set out our vision for the requirements of any international move to stop such violations:

  1. We affirm that respect of basic citizen rights is a defining attribute of sovereignty and statehood. Furthermore, respect of human rights is an essential element of a responsible sovereignty. The Syrian regime confronts the aspiration of the Syrian people to freedom and dignity with the commission of crimes against humanity. The Syrian regime has shot all doors on all inquiries into such violations, and on holding their perpetrators to account in an objective, fair and firm manner. Accordingly, such regime is not entitled to rely on the principle of Sovereignty to confront its own people. If it does so, it unsheathes yet another arm in the face of its own people, thereby exacerbating the bare condition of the Syrian people.
  2. We affirm the right of the Syrian people to freely determine, without external interference, the form of its political governance, and to pursue economic, social and cultural development of the Syrian society. The Syrian people has a right of self-determination, which is directly derived from Articles (1) and (55) of the United Nations Charter, when the ruling regime fails to meets its international responsibilities, and when it persists in its violations of individual rights and human dignity.
  3. As we insist, in the present very special circumstances, on the direct right of the Syrian people to affirm its right of self-determination before the international community, we assure that all calls based on the ground of “droit d’ingérance,” “devoir d’ingérance,” “humanitarian intervention” or “responsibility to protect” should not hinder the aspiration of the Syrian people to cause peaceful change by its own forces; or lead to dealing with the Syrian people as yet another sphere of influence in the game of nations. Every day, the demonstrators in Syrian towns and villages chant the motto “The People Wants…” The People Wants emancipation from authoritarian rule. It wants to take and hold the initiative in decision making in public affairs, in an independent and peaceful way, in order to determine all aspects of its public life freely and deliberatively. It also wants to maintain friendly relations among nations. The Syrian People does not want to substitute authoritarian rule by submission to foreign influence. The Syrian People extracted its independence and founded its modern State. It aspires to liberate all its lands and chiefly the Golan. It aspires to continue supporting the struggle of peoples for self-determination, and chiefly that of the Palestinian People. As the Syrian People is revolting against its oppressive rulers, it will not hesitate to revolt against all forms of foreign domination.
  4. We affirm that as the Syrian Revolution has been creative in its peaceful, incessant, and resilient movement, in the face of unparalleled repression, any international support, in light of the regime’s closure of any opportunities for national political solutions, must also be creative and unparalleled. It must be premised on the imperative of maintaining the unity of the Syrian soil, as well as the unity of Syrian society, in all its religious, sectarian and ethnic components.
  5. We consider that the objectives of international protection must be limited to ensuring the safety of peaceful assembly and demonstration, so as to enable the Syrian people to freely exercise self-determination, by its own peaceful forces, towards transition to a pluralistic, secular and democratic system of governance, based on public freedoms, as well as legal and political equality among all Syrians.
  6. We consider that the means for international protection, which must be approved by the Security Council, acting under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, must be limited to the following:
    1. To ensure proper conditions for peaceful assembly in accordance with the various human rights instruments in which Syria is a party. These include:
      1. To request that all member States of the United Nations shall take the necessary measures to prevent the supply of arms and all related materials to the Syrian regime.
      2. To force the Syrian regime to immediately lift restrictions on all forms of media.
      3. To force the Syrian regime to ensure the safe passage of all United Nations humanitarian agencies to all Syrian towns and villages, in order to enable them to supervise an immediate halt of killing and violence, release of detainees, uncovering of the fate of disappeared persons, withdrawal of armed forces, and removal of checkpoints from towns, villages and roads, to operate an uninterrupted international monitoring of all peaceful assemblies, especially those organized against the Syrian regime, and to report on any violations in their respect.
    2. To ensure proper conditions to carry out an impartial and objective investigation into the acts which are believed to be crimes against humanity, committed on Syrian soil as from March 15, 2011, and to refer their perpetrators to a fair trial. These include:
      1. To force the Syrian regime to receive an independent international commission of inquiry with a mission to investigate all allegations of human rights and international humanitarian law, to establish the facts and circumstances of such violations and to identify their perpetrators.
      2. To request all member States of the Unites Nations to enforce a travel ban and an assets freeze on all persons who are believed to be implicated, directly or indirectly, by way of incitement, participation or financing, in the commission of crimes against humanity in Syria, without prejudice to the principle of presumption of innocence.
      3. To refer the situation in Syria since March 15, 2011 to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court; and to force the Syrian regime to cooperate fully with the Court and the Prosecutor, and to provide all necessary assistance to enable the Court and the Prosecutor to discharge their respective functions.
    3. To ensure proper conditions to embark upon a nation-wide political process, as shall be agreed between all political and social forces composing the Syrian people, which should lead to achieving the desired democratic transition. These include:
      1. To ensure proper political conditions that allow a deliberative process to take place among all components of the Syrian people in respect of the transitional period and its constitutive procedures.
      2. To ensure proper political conditions to enable the Syrian people to carry out voting by universal suffrage and transparent, fair and free elections at all levels, as shall be required in the transitional period to achieve the desired democratic transition.
      3. To provide training and capacity building assistance to the Syrian armed forces and security services to increase their awareness of human rights and international humanitarian law, and to effect a change in their doctrine from protection of the regime to protection of the country, without prejudice to the unity of the army.
  7. The recalcitrance of the Syrian regime to meet its international obligations in terms of respect of human rights and international humanitarian law, may require, in this particular moment, that the international action contemplated above be supported by the sending of a United Nations observers mission, to be approved by a resolution of the Security Council acting under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter. The mandate of the observers mission must emphasize prevention and assistance in building appropriate political conditions to achieve a peaceful democratic transition in Syria. The observers mission must comprise civilian components holding nationalities of countries known historically for their neutrality, and under the direct supervision of the Secretary General of the United Nations, in cooperation with the League of Arab States. The observers mission’s staff members must be in such numbers as to allow them to be present in or reach any town or village at any time, to monitor and report to the United Nations Secretary General, on any violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, as well as on progress of the political process to achieve a peaceful democratic transition pursuant to appropriate constitutive procedures as shall be solely determined by the Syrian People.
  • We affirm the priority of using dialogue and peaceful persuasion, including the use of non-coercive and non-violent measures. Yet we have no illusions as to the Syrian regime’ obstinate responses and its attempts to buy time. Experience has shown that the granting of time has not rendered the Syrian regime less resolute in committing yet further violations of human rights and international humanitarian law. Such time costs the Syrian people more killing and destruction. Every day that passes means more people killed, and Syria finds itself even more remote from any possibility to find political solutions.
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Syrian Revolution الثورة السورية

[youtube http://youtu.be/9We6YLE6Qi8?]
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Immaturity as an origin of evil

Bashar al-Assad as a case study.

In my answer to the National Initiative for Change, which was based on the premise that Bashar would resign shortly after the start of the demonstrations, I explained to them that won’t happen and the war with the regime will take many months. I based my judgement on my personal assessment on the real situation in Syria and also on my personal knowledge of Bashar’s personality, which is mainly characterized by his immaturity.  The question that many may ask is how personal immaturity can lead a person to lose his or her conscience, committing crimes and consequently destroying himself and many people around him.

One important characteristic of mature people is that they have good sense of the reality. That means they are able to understand themselves and their environment in a proper way. Indeed, they understand that human beings grow psychologically in a way similar to way with which they grow physically. Each stage of life has its real psychological needs. These psychological needs need to be fulfilled in order the person to mature and grow in a healthy way. While in the early stages of life it is the responsibility of our parents to help us fulfill our needs, in the later stages of life it is our responsibility to find the way to fulfill these needs. Further, mature people can understand their strength and weakness. Thus, they try to develop further their strength and correct their weaknesses. Also, they can understand the life choices that present themselves to them and accept the ones that fit their personality and reject the ones that are not suitable to their personality. Plus, this understanding of own-self provides mature persons the capacity to understand people around them, thus they can distinguish other people’s real needs from their unreal needs and consequently fulfill for them the real ones only while being firm rejecting the unreal ones. Finally, mature people have good understanding for the laws that govern human relationships and interaction. Therefore, they can adapt properly to complex social realties and lead life events to the best outcome for them and for the people around them.

I knew Bashar when I was at medical school. Bashar at that time looked very nice and modest. Further, he looked happy or rather he used to joke all the time. This character used to provide people a sense of comfort, because they felt they are in the presence of the son of the president but they did not have to be formal. However, when I now look back at his behaviour, I can see the early signs of his immaturity. Indeed, his relationships with people were superficial. He had a lot of people around him but not real friends. However, he needed real relationships in order to mature and grow. Further, his jokes were some kinds of superficial fun rather than jokes come arise from an actual situation or reflect wit and intelligence. Indeed, Bashar was disconnected from reality of his own self and the world around him and his nice and fun personality was an escapade from the real world.

I formulated my above-mentioned interpretation of Bashar’s personality from the ideas that acquired through studying the course of his presidency and linking them to the old memories that I have about him. Indeed, let us look at the course of his presidency. Bashar started his presidency with his famous first inaugural speech. In his famous inaugural speech, Bashar promised reforms. However, ten years later he came to say that he was unable to do any of these reforms, because of the hard circumstances. Indeed, Bashar was not able to do these reforms, because has an inherent handicap in his personality that arises his indecisiveness and his pervasive sense of powerlessness. Another event in Bashar’s presidency was the Damascus spring. When Bashar permitted the forums to start, he did not understand the people’s need for freedom of speech and intellectual exchanges. He did not understand the effect of many decades of suppression of free speech. He did not understand that he and the people around him lacked the intellectual acumen that permits to them to keep up with the ideas that may arise from these forums. He thought that he was providing candies, and they should be happy with. Thus, when these forums propagated like mushrooms and the regime’s men were not able to keep up with the ideas arising from these forums, Bashar closed these forums abruptly even putting some participants in prison. That did not only create disappointment among the Syrian intellectuals, but also pain and bitterness. Another big mistake that Bashar did was mixing up the state business with the family business. The archexample of this was offering the monopoly of the mobile phone business to his cousin (Rami Makhlouf), thus provoking the Damascene businessmen and breaking the implicit agreement that Hafez al-Assad made with them. All that resulted in putting Riad Saif and Maamoun al-Homsi in prison on false charges, thus provoking pain and bitterness among the traditional Damascene business class. All the above-mentioned examples reflect Bashar’s inability to understand and deal with complex realities. However, I found that the most shocking example of his negative emotions and disconnection with the reality was his first speech after the uprising started during which he was smiling all the time, while people were dying in the street. This smile reminded me his naïve immature smile when he was young and how it has transformed into a silly wicked smile when he got older, demonstrating how immaturity lead into evil.

All the above-mentioned reflect how complex situations, such as the presidency, could shatter the psychological underpinning of immature naïve people, apparently modest and nice, transforming them into ruthless rulers, committing atrocious crimes. Further, it makes us question the wisdom of the father, Hafez al-Assad, who may be by wishing being eternal Bashar and despite the advices that were offered to him to do not do so, inherited his throne to inapt son, thus casting a curse upon him.

H. Khoury

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So, what do you think of your husband’s brutal crackdown, Mrs Assad?

Tuesday, 18 October 2011

Syria's First Lady Asma al-Assad, who stonewalled questions about the violence carried out in her husband's name GettySyria’s First Lady Asma al-Assad, who stonewalled questions about the violence carried out in her husband’s name

Vogue magazine famously called her a “rose in the desert”, while Paris Match proclaimed she was the “element of light in a country full of shadow zones”. But when Syria’s glamorous First Lady invited a group of aid workers to discuss the security situation with her last month, she appeared to have lost her gloss.

During the meeting, British-born Asma al-Assad – who grew up in Acton and attended a Church of England school in west London – came face to face with aid workers who had witnessed at first hand the brutality of her husband’s regime. Yet according to one volunteer who was present, the former investment banker and mother of President Bashar al-Assad’s three children appeared utterly unmoved when she heard about the plight of protesters.

“We told her about the killing of protesters,” said the man, who asked not to be named for fear of retribution. “We told her about the security forces attacking demonstrators. About them taking wounded people from cars and preventing people from getting to hospital … There was no reaction. She didn’t react at all. It was just like I was telling a normal story, something that happens every day.”

Syrians working with aid agencies to try to help the thousands injured as Mr Assad’s security forces unleash tanks, guns and airpower to crush a seven-month uprising against his rule had hoped for a lot more. The First Lady’s office contacted them and said she wanted to hear about the difficulties they faced in the field. She met the humanitarians in Damascus.

“She asked us about the risks of working under the current conditions,” he added. But when she was told about the abuses of power being committed by her husband’s notorious secret police, Mrs Assad’s blank face left them unimpressed. “She sees everything happening here. Everything is all over the news. It’s impossible she doesn’t know,” said the volunteer. Yet even if Mrs Assad does know about the worst of the violence and the 3,000 civilians human rights groups accuse the regime of killing, many people who have met her question what she could possibly do about it.

“Whatever her own views, she is completely hamstrung,” said Chris Doyle, the director of the Council of Arab-British Understanding. “There is no way the regime would allow her any room to voice dissent or leave the country. You can forget it.”

Mrs Assad, who achieved a first class degree in computer science from King’s College University, was brought up in Britain by her Syrian-born parents, who were close friends of Hafez al-Assad, the former President of Syria. She started dating Bashar al-Assad in her twenties, and they eventually married in 2000, when she moved to Syria for the first time.

According to one prominent Western biographer of the Assad family, Bashar chose Asma against the determined opposition of his sister and mother. “He had lots of beautiful girlfriends before her,” said the journalist, who asked not to be named. “He faced opposition when he wanted Asma because she was Sunni and he is Alawite. Here was Bashar al-Assad marrying outside the clan.”

She championed several development initiatives, and delivered genuine change by helping to create NGOs in Syria, as well as highlighting the plight of disabled children and laying the groundwork for plans to rehabilitate dozens of Syria’s ramshackle museums.

For some, she is the modern, made-up face of a former pariah state; to others, an aloof, 21st-century Marie Antoinette. Either way, nothing perhaps crystallised the fate of Syria’s First Lady better than the disastrously-timed interview run by Vogue magazine in its March issue this year.

Amid obsequious descriptions of Chanel jewellery and her matey banter with Brad Pitt during the Hollywood star’s 2009 visit to Syria, the article described how the Assad household was run on “wildly democratic principles”. According to Mrs Assad: “we all vote on what we want, and where.”

Naturally, many outraged Syrians were left asking why the Assads could not extend them the same courtesy.

source

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Mashaal Tammo’s cold blooded murder is another crime against humanity


    

On Friday October 7th, Mashaal Tammo, a well known activist and a spokesman for the Kurdish Future Party, was martyred by Bashar Assad henchmen in the city of Qamishli. This is another act of aggression not only against the Kurdish and the Syrian democracy movement but against the international community and all the people striving for democracy in the world. The Syrian opposition likes to point out that the blood of Mashaal Tammo and all the other innocent people killed in Syria is on the hands of Bashar Assad and the countries like China and Russia who by their veto of the United Nation Security Council’s resolution breathed confidence into his heinous acts of terror.

The Belgian Committee to support the Syrian revolution calls on the United Nations and all the free countries in the world to condemn the triangle of terror which includes Iran, China and Russia for their inhumane support of the criminal Syrian regime. It is time that the world realized economic interest should not justify massacre of a nation.

The Syrian people will never forget these acts of betrayal at the international level and reiterate their resolve in bringing Freedom and democracy to their country.

October 8, 2011
The Belgian Committee to support the Syrian revolution

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Mourning, outrage, disbelief over woman’s mutilation in Syria

By Salma Abdelaziz, CNN
September 23, 2011 — Updated 2031 GMT (0431 HKT)
Zainab Alhusni, 19, turned up beheaded and dismembered after Syrian security forces whisked her away.
Zainab Alhusni, 19, turned up beheaded and dismembered after Syrian security forces whisked her away.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
  • “They killed the rose Zainab,” protesters’ placards say
  • Zainab Alhusni’s death is called “appalling” by the United Nations
  • The woman was seized to get at her brother, many say

(CNN) — A young woman whisked away by Syrian security forces to coax the surrender of her activist brother turned up beheaded and dismembered, activists and human rights groups say, yet another high-profile display of cruelty in the conflict-wracked nation.

Nineteen-year-old Zainab Alhusni stepped away from her Homs residence last month to buy groceries.

Her family never saw her again until security forces returned her mutilated corpse, two opposition activist groups operating inside Syria and Amnesty International told CNN.

As reports of the torture sparked outrage across Homs and the rest of the world, amateur video surfaced of dozens of woman protesting the death.

“They killed the rose Zainab,” their placards said.

“If it is confirmed that Zainab was in custody when she died, this would be one of the most disturbing cases of a death in detention we have seen so far,” said Philip Luther, Amnesty’s deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa.

The case also drew the antipathy of the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, which characterized the incident as “appalling” and as one example of the “targeting and attacking of families and sympathizers of the protesters by security forces.”

The ferocious Syrian government crackdown against dissenters began in mid-March when anti-government protests unfolded. The number of people killed over the past six months has reached at least 2,700, according to the U.N. human rights office. Some activist groups put the toll at around 3,000.

Zainab’s brother Mohammed Alhusni — a prominent opposition activist praised by colleagues for leading anti-government protests and treating the wounded — had been evading authorities for weeks when his sister disappeared, said the Homs Quarters Union, an activist group.

“The secret police kidnapped Zainab so they could threaten her brother and pressure him to turn himself in to the authorities. The government often uses this tactic to get to activists,” a union media coordinator told CNN.

The Local Coordination Committees of Syria, an activist group, said security forces called Zainab’s family to trade her “freedom for her pro-democracy activist brother’s surrender,” LCC said.

Mohammed Alhusni was eventually slain on September 10, when security forces fired on demonstrators in Homs.

When the family retrieved Mohammed’s body from a Homs military hospital, medical officials told relatives about another unclaimed body with the label “Zainab Alhusni” that had been kept in a hospital freezer for some time.

Days later, Zainab’s family received the woman’s headless and limbless corpse, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Amnesty International and the Homs Quarters Union said.

The Homs Quarters Union provided a video to CNN showing the pale trunk of a female body beside a detached head with long black hair among dismembered limbs.

Authorities forced Zainab’s mother to sign a document saying both Zainab and Mohammad had been kidnapped and killed by an armed gang, Amnesty International said in an online statement.

Syrian authorities could not be reached for comment on the Alhusni case. The Syrian government has maintained that armed gangs with foreign agendas, not the regime, are responsible for the violence that has plagued the Arab country for months.

CNN cannot independently verify the authenticity of the video, the claims, or the death toll because the government has repeatedly denied requests for journalists to report inside Syria.

Video hard to watch here

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Family rejects Syria ‘spy confession’

[youtube http://youtu.be/TIqUZJWtZM8?]
A clip on al Jazeera English showing the family of the “Israeli spy” that Syrian television paraded on air. Apparently he was instrumental in the killing of Imad Mughniyeh, Hezbullah’s man, a few years back. I think the Syrian claims are nonsense on stilts, as are all their on-air “confessions”. Somebody should tell them that these things went out of fashion around the time that Stalin died.

source

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Fathers And Son- My personal disillusionment story

A rare glimpse from inside the prison: father and son al-Abdallah

When Bashar al-Assad came to power, Mohammad al-Abdallah believed things in Syria would finally change for good. Ten years later, he tells the story of a personal disillusionment.

By Mohammad al-Abdallah


Bashar Al-Assad has now been in power for 10 years. To me, that period equates to the length of time that members of my family and I have spent in Syrian prisons.

From the initial hope that accompanied his ascendance to the country’s presidency to this bitter realization a decade later, Syrians have undergone spiraling feelings of disappointment.

When Assad succeeded his father, Hafez, like many other Syrians I was hopeful that an era of change was dawning. We hoped that the new millennium would bring to an end the dark years of the father’s ruthless rule, when prisoners of conscience could die from torture in detention. But the years that followed showed me how misplaced my optimism was.

In the first year of Assad’s presidency, the Syrians experienced briefly the euphoria of change. The country witnessed an overwhelming number of forums of discussion, planning democratic reform. However, this period, which came to be known as the “Damascus Spring”, was swiftly crushed by the authorities. As the whole world was shaken by the terrorist attacks of 11 September in New York, the Syrian government was busy arresting opponents to the ruling Baath regime. Ten of Syria’s most prominent intellectuals were thrown behind bars for peacefully calling for reforms.

Still, many hoped that they would be released soon. They thought the arrests were the making of the autocratic old guards of the regime. They believed that the young president, who wanted to implement reform and change, would eventually grow stronger and defeat the conservatives.

The Iraq War As Alibi

In the years that followed, we realized that nothing had changed. The calls for democracy and freedom of expression continued to be stifled. Yet Assad was still able to convince the Syrians that he was a reformist president who needed more time to accomplish his vision.

The fall of Saddam in Iraq had strong repercussions in Syria.

The US invasion of Iraq in 2003 gave him another alibi to delay the implementation of reforms. The so-called existential threat against the Syrian establishment after the crumbling of the Baath regime in Iraq allowed the president to justify the prolongation of oppression on the internal front.

Two years later, a dramatic regional development extended this policy. With the 2005 assassination of Lebanese prime minister, Rafiq Hariri, widely blamed on Damascus, Syria officially entered a phase of international isolation. Western powers forced the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon and the establishment of an international tribunal into the killing of Hariri placed the regime under a sword of Damocles.

It was in this context, in my opinion, that the president showed his tyrannical face. That year was a dramatic time for Syrians, and mainly for my family. My father was arrested in May 2005 for his activities in the Atassi forum, the only space for political discussion that had survived the crackdown on forums in 2001.

A Family Under Arrest

I also went to prison a few months later for merely lobbying for the release of my father. I was released by a military court after a month in detention.

My father was also set free six months after his arrest thanks to a presidential amnesty. I naively believed this would be the end of our ordeals. Little did I know.

Less than half a year later, Assad decided to end the phase of relative tolerance for political dissidents. The secret services were given a green light to crush human rights activists. The message was clear to the Syrians: if you keep on raising your voices, you will end up in jail.

Subsequently, 2006 turned out to be one of the gloomiest years for civil society – and my family, in particular. In one week, all the men in my family were arrested and kept in unknown locations.

My brother was arrested with seven of his college classmates for running an online forum. Five days later, the security services arrested my father and me in two separate raids.

An aerial view of Sednaya Prison (by Google Earth)

It took me five weeks to find my father in the Sednaya military prison near Damascus. He had not been aware of my arrest. My brother was also in the same prison; each of us was on a different floor. I was in a nasty cell two floors underground, my brother was on the floor above me and my father was on the second floor.

After my reunion with my father, we asked to see my brother but the prison insisted that he was not in the same detention centre.

My father and I spent 18 days together in this jail before security agents dressed in civilian clothes transferred us to the Adra prison. There I met 10 other activists who were detained for signing the Damascus-Beirut declaration, a joint statement by Syrian and Lebanese intellectuals calling for the improvement of relations between the two neighboring countries.

I was finally convinced that nothing had really changed between the times of the father and those of the son. We were still living in a dictatorship.

New Waves Of Crackdown

While some analysts might argue that the invasion of Iraq and the assassination of Hariri put the regime at risk and pushed Assad’s government to adopt a hawkish, defensive posture, the relaxation of relations with the west since 2007 proves that this line of analysis is flawed.

As French and US officials poured into Damascus, Assad felt reassured that his regime was no longer in danger. Civil society expected a release of prisoners and reforms to finally ensue. Nothing of the sort happened. New waves of crackdown on activists followed as the US and Europe watched in silence.

After the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005, Syria became internationally isolated.


Following my release with my father after six and-a-half months in prison, I tried in vain to visit my brother in jail. Defendants tried by the State Security Court have no right to visits by family or even a lawyer before they are sentenced.

Without seeing my brother, I had to leave for Lebanon where I finished law school. All along, something inside was telling me that I would not go back home.

During my exile in Lebanon, I heard that my father, along with 11 other political dissidents, had been arrested again. This marked the point of no return for me. I applied for refugee status at the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, UNHCR, in Beirut. For me the word refugee sounded strange. I had never thought before that my country would push me to become one.

Ironically, despite all the ordeals of human rights activists in Syria, I see the first lady, Asma al-Assad, with her camera-friendly looks, telling the western world that the government is trying “to open more space for civil society.” I don’t know why, but every time I see her photogenic face, I remember my mother lying in a hospital bed suffering from kidney disease, heart problems and cancer. She is alone in her hospital room while her husband is in jail, her son is in another prison and her eldest is in exile.

Recently, Assad celebrated his first decade in power. A month earlier, my family was preparing to celebrate for other reasons. On June 17, my father was supposed to be set free after 30 months in prison. The government, however, decided to keep him instead in the same jail where he is facing again the same charges that had led to his imprisonment for a total of four years after three different trials. The charges are the “broadcast of false information that threaten to weaken the national sentiment”.

Can those who argue that Assad is a true reformer look me and my family in the eyes and say so?

Mohammad al-Abdallah is a Syrian human rights activist and writer living currently in Washington DC.

The original article is available at The Damascus Bureau @ http://www.damascusbureau.org/?p=1129
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الموسيقار مالك جندلي: وطني أنا

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-7WGj13rSc&feature=colike?]
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