Syrian Activists Targeted Despite Western Overtures

On a summer day a couple of years ago, I was giving a lecture about international agreements on human rights to a group of dissidents and civil rights activists gathered at a private house.

In the middle of my talk, security forces encircled the house, ordered me to stop the meeting and threatened to arrest those present if I failed to obey. So I asked everybody to leave, fearing for their freedom and safety.

A few days later, I was summoned for interrogation by the political security bureau. I admitted that as a civil rights advocate I bore full responsibility for the meeting. I asserted that it was my duty to inform citizens about their rights in accordance with the Syrian constitution.

The officer in charge told me bluntly that they would not arrest me for the moment because the country was facing international pressure and was getting ready to sign a wide-ranging economic agreement with the European Union.

He added that when the pressure starts to wear off and relations between Syria and the United States improve, the security apparatus would have no mercy on activists and would throw them all in jail.

It is debatable, however, whether the Syrian regime really does adjust its level of repression against activists depending on the state of its relations with the West.

The US and Europe’s engagement with Syria and the reactivation of diplomatic channels with Damascus have not discouraged Syrian officials from continuing to crack down on peaceful dissidents.

As recently as March, when Washington was waiting for a Congressional decision on the appointment of John Ford as the new US ambassador to Damascus after a five-year break, two of Syria’s most prominent advocates were being tried by a sham court amid international silence over their cases.

Haitham al-Maleh, a 78-year-old human rights lawyer who had already spent many years in jail, and Mohanad al-Hassani, the head of the local human rights group, Sawasiyah, were accused of the bogus charges of “spreading false news” and “threatening to weaken the nation’s moral”, which are typical of unlawful trials against dissidents.

Whether the situation of pro-democracy and human rights activists is now slightly better or worse is not the question as long as Syrian authorities still feel emboldened to intimidate and incarcerate its citizens without respect for international conventions on individual freedoms.

Many believe that the situation of human rights has been deteriorating particularly since 2005 when the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri was largely blamed on Damascus.

Since then, many peaceful dissidents have received long prison terms. In 2007, Kamal al-Labwani, a doctor, artist and political activist, was sentenced to 12 years in jail for "communicating with a foreign country and inciting it to initiate aggression against Syria". In 2005, Labwani had visited the US and met American officials.

Also in the same year, Anwar al-Bunni, a human rights lawyer, was sentenced to five years in prison because he revealed to Arab media outlets that a Syrian citizen had died from torture in a Syrian prison.

The prospects for human rights remain bleak today. According to Syrian pressure groups, the estimated number of prisoners of conscience currently exceeds 2,000.

Most are arrested and kept in jail for long periods without trial. Some are held incommunicado. Others are sentenced by military security courts, which derive their only legitimacy from the emergency law in effect in Syria since the Baath regime came to power in 1963.

This law makes it hard for activists to hold meetings and organise themselves.

One important factor contributing to the vulnerability of human rights advocates today is that they lack legal cover for their activities.

The government has refused to grant any of the nine local human rights organisations operating semi-openly in the country an official legal licence. This makes it easier to routinely arrest members of these groups on the basis that their activities are illegal.

Even when behind bars, and after being sentenced, activists are often deprived of their rights to receive visitors or meetings with their lawyers in private. They are sometimes also barred from communicating with other prisoners of conscience or have their cells routinely searched.

Some activists have even been convicted while they were already in jail serving time because they voiced an opinion to another prisoner who turned out to be an informant.

In addition to detentions, authorities practice different forms of intimidation against activists.

One of them is to pit state-run media against advocates to tarnish their reputations and discredit them in public. It is very common to read in official or government-controlled newspapers accusations against a certain dissident of having ties with “foreign forces”.

When one group of activists urged the EU not to sign an association agreement with Damascus before Syria agreed to respect human rights, they were described in the official media as traitors who were following a “Zionist and American” agenda to weaken the nation.

Other forms of pressure on activists include banning them from leaving the country, coercing them into collaborating with the security apparatus and threatening to cut off their source of income.

Some can find themselves removed from their positions as civil servants because they dare to undertake activities in the human rights field openly. Others are arbitrarily moved to remote areas far away from their families as a form of punishment. This happened to several teachers of my acquaintance.

Another measure practiced by security officials is to harm members of the detainee’s family or threaten such action. This is a form of psychological warfare waged by the authorities against activists.

In one case, security officials arrested a boy of ten, taking him from his classroom just because he had written his Kurdish name on the school’s wall.

When a human rights advocate went to ask about his fate, the officer in charge said sarcastically he could go free, “We stopped him to send a message to you and I think you got that message. We don’t recognise human rights.”

The identity of this human rights lawyer has been protected for security reasons.