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Robert Fisk: Silenced by the men in white socks

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  • Robert Fisk: Silenced by the men in white socks

    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.
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