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Robert Fisk: Silenced by the men in white socks
Independent.co.uk Web
Saturday, 15 March 2008
The Damascus Spring has presaged no golden summer for Syria
Shut them up. Accuse them. Imprison them. Stop them talking. Why is it
that this seems to have become a symbol of the Arab ` or Muslim `
world? Yes I know about our Western reputation for free speech; from
the Roman Empire to the Spanish inquisition, from Henry VIII to
Robespierre, from Mussolini and Stalin to Hitler, even ` on a pitiable
scale ` to Mr Anthony Blair. But it's getting hard to avoid the Middle
East.
When Egyptian women cry "Enough!", they are sexually abused by
Mubarak's cops. When Algerians demand to know which policemen killed
their relatives, they are arrested for ignoring the regime's amnesty.
When Benazir Bhutto is murdered in Rawalpindi, a cloak of silence falls
over the world's imams. Pontificating about the assassination in
Pakistan, Shaikh es-Sayed, who runs one of Canada's biggest mosques,
expressed his condolences to "families of beloved brothers and sisters
who died in the incident [sic]". Asked why he didn't mention Bhutto's
name, he replied: "Why? This is not a political arena. This is about
religion. That's politics." Well, it certainly is in Syria. George Bush
` along with M. Sarkozy ` has been berating Damascus for its lack of
democracy and its human rights abuses and its supposed desire to gobble
up Lebanon and "Palestine" and even Cyprus. But I always feel that
Syria had a raw deal these past 90 years.
First came the one-armed General Henri Gouraud, who tore Lebanon off
from Syria in 1920 and gave it to the pro-French Christians. Then Paris
handed the Syrian coastal city of Alexandretta to the Turks in 1939 `
sending survivors of the 1915 Armenian genocide into exile for a second
time ` in the hope that Turkey would join the Allies against Hitler.
(The Turks obliged ` in 1945!) Then in the Six Day War, Syria lost the
Golan Heights ` subsequently annexed by Israel. Far from being
expansionist, Syria seems to get robbed of land every two decades.
On the death of Hafez al-Assad in 2000 ` it's extraordinary how, like
Sharon now that he is comatose, we come to like these old rogues once
they've departed ` we were told there was to be a "Damascus Spring". I
always thought this a bit dodgy. I'd experienced the Lebanon Spring and
read about the Ukraine Spring and I'm old enough to remember the Prague
Spring, which ended in tears and tanks. And sure enough, the Damascus
Spring presaged no golden summer for Syria.
Instead, we've gone back to the midnight knock and the clanging of the
cell door. Why ` oh why ` must this be so? Why did the Syrian secret
police have to arrest Dr Ahmed Thoma, Dr Yasser el-Aiti, Jabr al-Shufi,
Fayez Sara, Ali al-Abdulla and Rashed Sattouf in December, only days
after they ` along with 163 other brave Syrians ` had attended a
meeting of the Damascus Declaration for Democratic Change? The
delegates had elected Dr Fida al-Hurani head of their organisation.
She, too, was arrested, and her husband, Dr Gazi Alayan, a Palestinian
who had lived in Syria for 18 years, deported to Jordan.
The net spread wider, as they say in police reports. The renowned
Syrian artist Talal Abu Dana was arrested up in Aleppo, his studio
trashed and his paintings destroyed. Then on 18 February, Kamel
al-Moyel from the lovely hill town of Zabadani, on the steam train
route from Damascus, was picked up by the boys in white socks. A point
of explanation here. Almost all Middle East Moukhabarat men ` perhaps
because a clothing emporium has won a concession for the region's
secret policemen ` wear white socks. The only ones who don't are the
Israeli variety, who wear old baseball hats.
Needless to say, the Syrian prisoners were not ignored by their regime.
A certain Dr Shuabi, who runs a certain Data and Strategic Studies
Centre in Damascus, appeared on al-Jazeera to denounce the detainees
for "dealing with foreign powers". Dr al-Hurani suffered from angina
and was briefly sent to hospital before being returned to the Duma
jail. But when the prisoners were at last brought to the Palace of
Justice, Ali al-Abdulla appeared to have bruises on his body. Judge
Mohamed al-Saa'our ` the third investigative judge in Damascus,
appointed by the ministry of interior ` presided over the case at which
the detainees were accused of "spreading false information", forming a
secret organisation to overthrow the regime, and for inciting
"sectarian and racist tendencies". The hearing, as they say, continues.
But why? Well, back on 4 December, George Bush met at the White House `
the rendezvous was initially kept secret ` the former Syrian MP Mamoun
al-Homsi (who currently lives, dangerously perhaps, in Beirut) with
Amar Abdulhamid, a member of a think thank run by a former Israeli
lobbyist, and Djengizkhan Hasso, a Kurdish opposition activist. Nine
days later, an official "source" leaked the meeting to the press. Which
is about the time the Syrian Moukhabarat decided to pounce. So whose
idea was the meeting? Was it, perhaps, supposed ` once it became public
` to provoke the Syrian cops into action?
The Damascus newspaper Tichrine ` the Syrian equivalent of Private
Eye's Rev Blair newsletter ` demanded to know why Washington was
showing such concern for human rights in Syria. Was not the
American-supported blockade of one and a half million Gaza Palestinians
a violation of the rights of man? Had not the Arabs seen all too
clearly Washington's concern for the rights of man in Abu Ghraib and
Guanatanamo? All true. But why on earth feed America's propaganda
machine (Syria as the centre of Hamas/ Hiz-bollah/Islamic Jihad terror,
etc) with weekly arrests of middle-aged academics and even, it
transpires, the vice-dean of the Islamic studies faculty at Damascus
University?
Of course, you won't find Israel or the United States engaged in this
kind of thing. Absolutely not. Why, just two months ago, the Canadian
foreign minister, Maxime Bernier, discovered that a confidential
document sent to Canadian diplomats included a list of countries in
which prisoners risked being tortured ` and the names of America and
Israel were on the list! Merde! Fortunately for us all, M. Bernier knew
how to deal with such pernicious lies. The document, he announced,
"wrongly includes some of our closest allies. It doesn't represent the
opinion or the policy of the (Canadian) government". Even though, of
course, the list is correct.
But M. Bernier managed to avoid and close down the truth, just as Mr
Mubarak does in Cairo and President Bouteflika does in Algiers and just
as the good Shaikh es-Sayed did in Toronto. Syria, according to Haitham
al-Maleh, a former Syrian judge, claims there are now almost 3,000
political prisoners in Syria. But how many, I wonder, are there in
Algeria? Or in Egypt? Or in the hands ` secret or otherwise ` of the
United States? Shut them up. Lock them up. Silence.
Independent.co.uk Web
Saturday, 15 March 2008
The Damascus Spring has presaged no golden summer for Syria
Shut them up. Accuse them. Imprison them. Stop them talking. Why is it
that this seems to have become a symbol of the Arab ` or Muslim `
world? Yes I know about our Western reputation for free speech; from
the Roman Empire to the Spanish inquisition, from Henry VIII to
Robespierre, from Mussolini and Stalin to Hitler, even ` on a pitiable
scale ` to Mr Anthony Blair. But it's getting hard to avoid the Middle
East.
When Egyptian women cry "Enough!", they are sexually abused by
Mubarak's cops. When Algerians demand to know which policemen killed
their relatives, they are arrested for ignoring the regime's amnesty.
When Benazir Bhutto is murdered in Rawalpindi, a cloak of silence falls
over the world's imams. Pontificating about the assassination in
Pakistan, Shaikh es-Sayed, who runs one of Canada's biggest mosques,
expressed his condolences to "families of beloved brothers and sisters
who died in the incident [sic]". Asked why he didn't mention Bhutto's
name, he replied: "Why? This is not a political arena. This is about
religion. That's politics." Well, it certainly is in Syria. George Bush
` along with M. Sarkozy ` has been berating Damascus for its lack of
democracy and its human rights abuses and its supposed desire to gobble
up Lebanon and "Palestine" and even Cyprus. But I always feel that
Syria had a raw deal these past 90 years.
First came the one-armed General Henri Gouraud, who tore Lebanon off
from Syria in 1920 and gave it to the pro-French Christians. Then Paris
handed the Syrian coastal city of Alexandretta to the Turks in 1939 `
sending survivors of the 1915 Armenian genocide into exile for a second
time ` in the hope that Turkey would join the Allies against Hitler.
(The Turks obliged ` in 1945!) Then in the Six Day War, Syria lost the
Golan Heights ` subsequently annexed by Israel. Far from being
expansionist, Syria seems to get robbed of land every two decades.
On the death of Hafez al-Assad in 2000 ` it's extraordinary how, like
Sharon now that he is comatose, we come to like these old rogues once
they've departed ` we were told there was to be a "Damascus Spring". I
always thought this a bit dodgy. I'd experienced the Lebanon Spring and
read about the Ukraine Spring and I'm old enough to remember the Prague
Spring, which ended in tears and tanks. And sure enough, the Damascus
Spring presaged no golden summer for Syria.
Instead, we've gone back to the midnight knock and the clanging of the
cell door. Why ` oh why ` must this be so? Why did the Syrian secret
police have to arrest Dr Ahmed Thoma, Dr Yasser el-Aiti, Jabr al-Shufi,
Fayez Sara, Ali al-Abdulla and Rashed Sattouf in December, only days
after they ` along with 163 other brave Syrians ` had attended a
meeting of the Damascus Declaration for Democratic Change? The
delegates had elected Dr Fida al-Hurani head of their organisation.
She, too, was arrested, and her husband, Dr Gazi Alayan, a Palestinian
who had lived in Syria for 18 years, deported to Jordan.
The net spread wider, as they say in police reports. The renowned
Syrian artist Talal Abu Dana was arrested up in Aleppo, his studio
trashed and his paintings destroyed. Then on 18 February, Kamel
al-Moyel from the lovely hill town of Zabadani, on the steam train
route from Damascus, was picked up by the boys in white socks. A point
of explanation here. Almost all Middle East Moukhabarat men ` perhaps
because a clothing emporium has won a concession for the region's
secret policemen ` wear white socks. The only ones who don't are the
Israeli variety, who wear old baseball hats.
Needless to say, the Syrian prisoners were not ignored by their regime.
A certain Dr Shuabi, who runs a certain Data and Strategic Studies
Centre in Damascus, appeared on al-Jazeera to denounce the detainees
for "dealing with foreign powers". Dr al-Hurani suffered from angina
and was briefly sent to hospital before being returned to the Duma
jail. But when the prisoners were at last brought to the Palace of
Justice, Ali al-Abdulla appeared to have bruises on his body. Judge
Mohamed al-Saa'our ` the third investigative judge in Damascus,
appointed by the ministry of interior ` presided over the case at which
the detainees were accused of "spreading false information", forming a
secret organisation to overthrow the regime, and for inciting
"sectarian and racist tendencies". The hearing, as they say, continues.
But why? Well, back on 4 December, George Bush met at the White House `
the rendezvous was initially kept secret ` the former Syrian MP Mamoun
al-Homsi (who currently lives, dangerously perhaps, in Beirut) with
Amar Abdulhamid, a member of a think thank run by a former Israeli
lobbyist, and Djengizkhan Hasso, a Kurdish opposition activist. Nine
days later, an official "source" leaked the meeting to the press. Which
is about the time the Syrian Moukhabarat decided to pounce. So whose
idea was the meeting? Was it, perhaps, supposed ` once it became public
` to provoke the Syrian cops into action?
The Damascus newspaper Tichrine ` the Syrian equivalent of Private
Eye's Rev Blair newsletter ` demanded to know why Washington was
showing such concern for human rights in Syria. Was not the
American-supported blockade of one and a half million Gaza Palestinians
a violation of the rights of man? Had not the Arabs seen all too
clearly Washington's concern for the rights of man in Abu Ghraib and
Guanatanamo? All true. But why on earth feed America's propaganda
machine (Syria as the centre of Hamas/ Hiz-bollah/Islamic Jihad terror,
etc) with weekly arrests of middle-aged academics and even, it
transpires, the vice-dean of the Islamic studies faculty at Damascus
University?
Of course, you won't find Israel or the United States engaged in this
kind of thing. Absolutely not. Why, just two months ago, the Canadian
foreign minister, Maxime Bernier, discovered that a confidential
document sent to Canadian diplomats included a list of countries in
which prisoners risked being tortured ` and the names of America and
Israel were on the list! Merde! Fortunately for us all, M. Bernier knew
how to deal with such pernicious lies. The document, he announced,
"wrongly includes some of our closest allies. It doesn't represent the
opinion or the policy of the (Canadian) government". Even though, of
course, the list is correct.
But M. Bernier managed to avoid and close down the truth, just as Mr
Mubarak does in Cairo and President Bouteflika does in Algiers and just
as the good Shaikh es-Sayed did in Toronto. Syria, according to Haitham
al-Maleh, a former Syrian judge, claims there are now almost 3,000
political prisoners in Syria. But how many, I wonder, are there in
Algeria? Or in Egypt? Or in the hands ` secret or otherwise ` of the
United States? Shut them up. Lock them up. Silence.