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At the beginning, I would like to draw
your attention to an interview published in The Wall Street journal
a few days ago (27th March 08) with Rami Makhloof, the cousin of the
Syrian President and Financial Advisor of the ruling family. He
complained that the USA did not treat him fairly: it froze his funds
and advised American companies not to deal with him as he is
regarded as part of the corrupt Syrian “Mafia”, which has
monopolised successful business and prevented Syrian people from the
opportunities of free trade and fair competition in all areas of
production and trade.
I chose to start with mentioning this interview to highlight the
common mistake we all make when we discuss human rights: we always
focus on political oppression, prisons and torture. We drown in
reports from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Article
19. Yet we forget that there are millions of simple Syrians whose
human rights are violated daily: rights such as expression, travel,
promotion and obtaining work complementary to their qualifications
and skills. In Syria, the principles of fair work were confiscated
before political freedoms, and prevented its people from fair work
by abolishing the right of citizenship altogether. Syrians now fall
into classes, and the lucky classes are those closest to the
establishments. Benefits are given, not based on need and
eligibility, but rather in return for services and support for the
brutal government.
In this Republic of Fear and Silence, there is no such thing as
equality before the Law. The Law only exists on paper. But in
reality, the judiciary and the government are the same. All men of
law, most of whom belong to the Ba’th Party, receive their
instructions from the Party leadership, or from heads of security
who exercise unfair imprisonment, torture, and long detention
without trial, all without referral to the legal system. There are
prisoners held without charge or trial for years, sometimes reaching
a quarter of a century. There are countless stories of people being
imprisoned for years without charge and eventually being released
never knowing why they had spent so much of their lives behind bars.
The American State Department report released in the second week of
March placed Syria in the worst 10 countries for violating human
rights. Meanwhile, the French Correspondents Sans Frontiers had
placed it as number 155 out of 166 worst countries in violating
freedom of expression, and the Berlin-based International
Transparency Organisation always placed Syria in a low rank in terms
of transparency and fighting corruption. None of this is surprising
since oppression is always accompanied by corruption. Syrians have
lived under emergency rule since 1962. This has enabled all regimes
since then to violate the most basic rights for its people. Many
attempts have been made to lift the emergency rule with no avail.
The rulers have always found this an ideal tool in controlling
opposition and establishing their rule of oppression. However, the
rulers always alluded to the contrary: In 1990 President Hafez
Assad, the father of the current president, gave a public speech in
which he ordered his government to lighten emergency rule and only
use them in case of threat to state security. This had no effect on
the security forces, who continued to arrest and detain anyone
calling for freedom of expression or democracy. A similar thing
happened a few years before when he gave a speech calling for ending
corruption and the independence of the Judiciary. A few days after
the speech he dissolved the union of lawyers and arrested 60 of its
members. He then proceeded to dissolve all other professional unions
and re-form them in a way more fitting for the Ruling party.
The difference between Father Assad and his son, Bashar is a
difference in degree rather than in style or principle. Nor is it,
as Flaynt Lefriet, the author of Inheriting Syria: Bashar’s Trial by
Fire, proposed, a difference in degree of atrocity alone.
It is true that Bashar Assad has not demolished entire villages nor
committed mass massacres like his father. However, human rights are
much the same as they were in his father’s reign. The emergency rule
has not been lifted or modified, the law allowing for multiple
political parties has not come into place. Continuous unexplained
incarcerations are still taking place, one of the latest being
members of the Damascus Declaration for Peaceful Democratic Change.
They joined a long list of prisoners of conscience, estimated by
Patrick Seale the biographer of the father Assad, to reach 5000
political prisoners. This situation makes Syria comparable to
Franco’s Spain and Ceauşescu’s Romania. The massacres are only
surpassed by the deposed Iraqi regime and the Khmer Rouge of
Cambodia.
Amnesty International has enumerated in one of its reports 38
methods of torture in Syrian prisons, most of which are still in
use. In 2005, I presented an edition of the Syrian Opposition
program, “Date with the future”, focusing on torture in Syrian
prisons. There were many painful first-hand testaments by political
prisoners who were tortured under the current regime. This
emphasizes that changing the head of government does not mean
changing the political status quo. The prisons remain, and the
courts are still dictated by the ruling party, particularly the
Supreme State Security Court, which continues to pass the Death
Penalty to anyone found guilty of belonging to the Islamic
Brotherhood, under Law No. 49, passed in 1980.
This is a very unique Act as, to my knowledge, there is no other
place in the world that has such a severe punishment for merely
belonging to a political group. This is particularly serious, as the
decisions of the Supreme State Security Court are final, and there
is no room for appeal. This is another major hurdle in the way of
anyone attempting reform, as the effective rule of Syria pays no
regard to its written constitution, even though this constitution
was tailor-made for the government of the late President Assad in
1973.
Clause 28 of the constitution, for example, bans torture. Yet
torture has never left Syrian prisons, even though Syria has signed
the 1969 International Treaty for Political and Civic Rights. Clause
39 of the constitution permits peaceful demonstrations, and
formation of political parties and organisations, yet the only
organization permitted in Syria is the “National Progressive Front”
which was formed by the late President Assad as mere decoration to
complement his rule. As for peaceful demonstrations, they have never
been allowed, not in the time of Hafez Assad nor his son, quite the
contrary, any demonstrators that dare are met with the most brutal
security response. This was seen in the demonstration outside the
Palace of Justice in 2007, where demonstrators called for ending
emergency rule. Those peaceful demonstrators are assaulted by
security forces that are above the law, the country falls prey to a
whole set of plagues that are difficult to get rid of.
And with this dark history of the Syrian regime, we must not forget
to highlight the plight of the Syrian Kurds who are denied Syrian
citizenship after a 1962 census that prevented almost half a million
people from citizenship rights in their own country, due to random
ideological reasons. I need to draw your attention to the fact the
Syrian prisons do not only hold Syrians, but also Palestinians,
Jordanians Lebanese and Saudis. The Syrian Observatory for human
rights holds many files on the suffering of these and Syrian
prisoners of conscience under a regime whose oppression reached into
neighbouring lands.
There is no reason why the regime can explain this brutally
oppressive rule, as most opposition movements have for a long time
rejected violence and called for peaceful change, the kind of spirit
that the current president Assad promised to support and promote at
the start of his reign. He has not fulfilled a single promise from
his first speech to the nation in June 2000. Since he came to power,
he confiscated the Damascus Spring Movement, arrested some people
who signed Statement ’99 and Statement 1000. He ordered the closure
of any political platforms in the country, and when the Syrian
opposition gathered under the umbrella of the Damascus Declaration,
the regime used all its power to crush this movement.
The latest wave of arrests hit the leaders of this peaceful
democratic coalition at the end of last year when their national
congress held a meeting in December to elect a new general council
within a democratic setting showcasing the validity and credibility
of Syrian opposition. A week after this meeting, an arrest campaign
was launched by the government on the leaders and council members,
most of whom either spent months detained without charge, or were
charged with accusations such as “spreading of vicious rumours aimed
at defaming the nation and weakening its spirit”. And there are
reports confirming the torture of at least three of these members:
Yasir Al-Etti, Ahmad Toma and Ali Abdullah.
After the arrests of the leadership of the Damascus Declaration, the
state deported the husband of Fida Horany, the president of the
National Council of the Damascus Declaration. They also arrested
Ryad Saif (former member of the Syrian parliament’s and mistreated
him despite his poor health. The government had previously refused
international calls for allowing Ryad Saif to travel abroad to
obtain treatment for prostate cancer, which has now reached very
late stages. Fida Horany herself is also reported to suffer from
severe health problems, and so is the Professor Aref Dalila, who has
been in solitary confinement for more than 5 years.
For these brave souls of the opposition, some of whom we may lose
soon, there has not been any serious international effort to apply
pressure on the Syrian government to relieve their suffering. They
are paying the price of opposing a reactionary regime that refuses
to practice any rule of governing other than that of oppressive
security rule.
Britain and the E.U. can do a great deal to apply pressure on the
Syrian regime to restrict its reign of oppression and relieve the
suffering people of Syria. The least we can ask for is for these
countries to deal with the true representatives of the Syrian
people, and refuse dealing with representatives of the corrupt
oppressive regime. There exists a British-Syrian society headed by
Sir Andrew Green with Dr. Fawaz Al-Akhras, the father-in-law of
President Bashar Assad. A number of British MPs are linked to this
society. We cannot but ask how the conscience of the representatives
of such an old and exemplary democracy allows them to mingle so
closely with representatives of a regime notorious for being one of
the worst in terms of human right abuses?
And here we urge you not to treat the Syrian opposition as a human
rights case, but as a force for change. Through the Wall Street
Journal interview with Rami Makhloof that I mentioned at the start
of my speech, the Syrian regime gives a clear threat in the
statement: “Now my name is publicly linked with enterprises that I
admit owning, in the future there will be new entities of which you
will not be able to prove my ownership.” This ability to hide and
deceive applies to commercial entities as it applies to the true
state of affairs within Syria. We only see the surface that can be
affected and changed by the regime. And we will never know the full
truth of crimes and oppression committed by the regime without
strong and consistent international pressure. This includes, as an
example, an explanation of the mass disappearances: there are 17,000
people who have ‘disappeared’ over the past 25 years, and the
government has consistently refused to give any information on their
whereabouts or fate.
These mass arrests and murders have, sadly, weaved the current
Syrian entity, and we need to unravel it and re-weave it. But we can
only do this after the reign of oppression is replaced and the
Syrian people regain their basic rights. Then, and only then can,
Syria begin its long delayed journey towards freedom
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