The beginning of a citizens' movement?

Xu was on his way to Dongshigu, a village near Linyi (located in the vicinity of the east coast, north of Shanghai) when he was arrested by the police at the bus station.
Although not a militant or human rights activist, the forty-five-year-old Xu sought to visit Chen Guangcheng, a lawyer currently under house arrest.
I knew it was going to be dangerous, but I didn’t think it would be this dangerous, he told AP.
He was held for questioning, suspected of drug dealing, the police informed him.
He was eventually released and driven back home.
Gao Xinbo, a Chen supporter, managed to enter the village, but then was seized, beaten and robbed.
He was then thrown out of the car that had taken him away, forty miles from the village.
All those who have tried to see Chen have suffered a similar fate.
He is a legal citizen, not a criminal; we should have the right to visit him, Xu told AP.
Yet, some Chinese citizens are held incommunicado, although they have not been charged or convicted of any offense.
This policy is known as ruanjin, or soft detention. It is reserved for those Chinese such as lawyers, human rights activists and the like who have refused to be intimidated and submit to the will of the authorities, and yet have committed no crime.
Such rebels are also sometimes held in black jails (prisons that do not officially exist) or psychiatric wards (where Soviet dissidents were also held indefinitely).
In Chen Guangcheng’s case, soft detention began soon after his release following a four-year prison sentence for disturbing the peace and destroying public property.
Born in 1971, Chen lost his eyesight as a child due to illness.
Illiterate until his twenties, Chen attended a school for the blind, then studied medicine, before attending law classes.
A masseur at the Yunan county hospital, Chen began granting legal assistance to farmers threatened with the illegal seizure of their land.
In 2005, he defended the victims of a coercive abortion and sterilization program (even unlawful by Chinese standards) imposed in Shandong.
The authorities could not tolerate these revelations of abuse of power by local officials.
Chen was arrested, tried and jailed on bogus charges.
Upon his release in September 2010, he was placed under house arrest, a victim of soft detention.
I have come out of a small jail and walked into a bigger jail. What they are doing is thuggery…Why are they afraid of my talking to the outside world? Because they know full well that they are wrong. They know what they are doing is illegal, Chen proclaimed in a video that  found its way to the West, and which denounced his living conditions.
Chen, as well as his wife, Yuan Weijing, was severely beaten in retaliation for the video’s release.
Many of their belongings (computers, cameras) were confiscated, and the electricity cut off.
They had already been deprived of a telephone line.
Video cameras monitor their every move; sheets of metal cover their windows, while roads leading to their village are under constant surveillance by armed thugs.
Their six-year old daughter has also been compelled to remain indoors, and thus, is also under house arrest…
Yet, Chen’s fate has attracted the attention of Chinese citizens not previously active in the human rights movement.
The fundamental unfairness of that really strikes a chord with Chinese citizens, Phelim Kine, of Human Rights Watch in Hong Kong, told the WSJ.
Indeed, the ruanjin policy, because blatantly illegal, does not officially exist.
The authorities deny that the family is under any restrictions. Confronted by European diplomats, Chinese officials have insisted there is no such thing as house arrest in China. Reached by telephone on Wednesday, Xue Jie, the director of the Yinan County propaganda bureau, suggested that a reporter could simply call Mr. Chen or just drop by, wrote Andrew Jacobs and Jonathan Ansfield of the NYT last February. The NYT reporters tried to do just that but were harassed and compelled to leave...
Soft detention is simply one more expedient in China’s extra-legal arsenal to harass those rebels the authorities consider likely to undermine their authority should they be allowed to pursue their activities.
Moreover, if it can goad one such misfit into committing an illegal act liable to prosecution, conviction and incarceration, so much the better…
There are too many people doing too many different things, and the authorities know if they use so-called legal methods, it will only provoke a greater domestic backlash and more international pressure, Teng Biao, a lecturer at China University of Political Science and Law, told the NYT.
Discrete repression is, therefore, the preferred tactic of the regime.
But, their zeal to remain firmly in control of a population now adept at using the web to communicate and share information has led to an ever-harsher crackdown on those who refuse to submit.
The police are progressively trying new techniques, and it seems that Beijing is ready to go along.
We used to worry about people getting arrested and losing their jobs. Now we have to worry about them losing their lives, Nicholas Bequelin, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, told the NYT last February.
The authorities may be fighting a losing battle.
Activists have launched an internet campaign on behalf of Chen, particularly on Weibo, the popular Chinese microblogging site with over 200 million users.
The campaign, called Operation Free Chen Guangcheng has awakened the civic consciousness of even ordinary Chinese.
I couldn’t believe something so dark and evil could happen in my country, so I had to see for myself, a young computer salesman told the NYT.
Along with five other citizens, he attempted to visit Chen. Their vehicle was set upon even before they had reached the village.
Earlier this month, some twenty other citizens made similar attempts.
It was unexpected that there would be so many spontaneous responses to the calls to visit him, especially from so many ordinary people with no previous experience in rights defense work...If they continue to do this, it will soon become a citizens' movement, He Peirong, a Chinese activist told AP earlier this month.
He tried on four occasions to see Chen, but was rebuffed and assaulted each time…
I think the campaign has entered an important new phase.
This time the social elite and the media are standing up for him, he told the NYT.
Indeed, a Chinese newspaper suggested that the authorities make a more earnest effort to explain Chen’s status.
Yesterday, the WSJ reported that the authorities had at last allowed Chen’s daughter to go to school…
This first victory should encourage the nascent citizen’s movement to intensify its campaign on behalf of Chen and all the others in a similar predicament.
The authorities are obviously listening and may be more vulnerable then many thought…
(the photograph of Chen Guangcheng above was found here)

*In May 2010, I wrote this post about the disappearance of Gao Zhisheng, a Chinese human rights lawyer, no doubt secretly arrested and detained by the regime…
Unfortunately, there has been absolutely no word since about his fate or whereabouts…

Laura Pollan Toledo 1948-2011...

A few words (though this hardly does her justice) to pay tribute to a brave woman, Laura Pollan Toledo, founder of the Ladies in White in Cuba, which she established after the arrest of her husband, Hector Maseda, a journalist, in 2003 (I had written about Laura and the Cuban human rights movement last year in a post you can find here). Laura died last Friday in a Havana hospital of cardiac arrest, following a pulmonary illness.
The group was composed of the wives of dissidents, who demanded the release of all political prisoners arrested in the spring of 2003, during a wave of arrests referred to as the Black Spring..
We fight for the freedom of our husbands, the union of our families. We love our men, she declared in 2005.
All have now been released, but Laura pursued her campaign for democracy and justice nevertheless.
As long as this government is around there will be prisoners. Because while they’ve let some go, they’ve put others in jail. It is a never-ending story, she said last month.
We continue being defenders of human rights. We are not politicians, we want freedom for the country, democracy, she also declared.
The Ladies would dress in white every Sunday, and, after attending Mass, march down Havana’s main avenue, each holding a gladiolus.
Though regularly harassed by pro-government thugs, the Ladies never failed to demonstrate week after week…
It’s really bad news for the human rights and pro-democracy movement. It’s an irreparable loss. We ‘ll see with time if others step forward to take her place, Elizardo Sanchez, leader of the Cuban Commission of Human Rights, an independent NGO, told Reuters.
Yesterday, the Ladies marched (see the video here), though for the first time, without Laura…
Men were allowed to join them this time (including Hector Maseda), in her honor…
At the end of the gathering, instead of shouting Freedom as they traditionally did, they chanted Laura Pollan lives…
May the spirit of Laura Pollan inspire her Cuban compatriots and encourage them to pursue, as fearlessly as she did, the struggle for justice and democracy…
(the photograph above of Laura Pollan was found here)

Why not Barghouti?

Gilad Shalit, the franco-Israeli soldier captured by Hamas militants in 2006 should be returning home next Tuesday.
Following a deal with Hamas negotiated with the help of Egypt and Germany, Shalit will be released into Egyptian hands before regaining Israel.
Once Shalit reaches the Sinai, Israel will release 27 female Palestinian prisoners.
After he sets foot on Israeli soil, another 450 Palestinian prisoners will be set free, the list having been compiled during the Hamas-Israel negotiations…
In two months, the agreement stipulates that Israel is to release an additional 550 prisoners, of its own choosing.
Israel has pledged however, to liberate security detainees, and not, to quote Haaretz, mere car thieves…
Of the 1007 Palestinians to be set free, 280 were serving life sentences in Israeli jails. All in all, according to the Israelis, they are responsible for the death of some 600 people…
The list of those being freed includes one of the founders of Hamas’ military wing, Yihya Sanawar.
Although all released detainees will be required to sign a statement vowing not to resort to violence in the future, Shin Bet, Israel’s national security agency expects that about 60% will probably do so anyway…
Hamas also made some concessions to clinch the deal.
Israel reserves the right, again with Hamas’ approval, oddly enough, to arrest or assassinate any released militant it chooses, should they be perceived as a potential threat to the state.
Furthermore, the agreement calls for the deportation of 203 Palestinians to Gaza, or foreign countries. Jordan and Turkey have been mentioned as possible new homes for these militants.
Israel had always refused to release so many prisoners it considered dangerous in exchange for Shalit’s liberation.
Why did it accept such terms now, five years after the young soldier's capture?
President Mahmoud Abbas’s attempts to gain UN recognition for the state of Palestine may have been the decisive factor in goading both sides to accept a deal that had been available for years…The Israelis were clearly intent on changing the subject and deflecting attention from the Abbas campaign.
Hamas is increasingly unpopular due to continued economic hardship imposed by Israel’s blockade of the territory, and its political isolation.
In addition, Hamas has thrown its support behind the Assad regime in Syria (one of its principle patrons), even though the latter has brutally cracked down on a popular uprising looked upon favorably by the peoples of the region (including Palestinians) and elsewhere.
Hamas’ leader Khaled Meshal lives in exile in Damascus…
Hamas was thus in dire need of a political boost.
The Islamic movement also managed to achieve what years of Israeli-Palestinian Authority negotiations never did: a mass release of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails!
Their victory is another nail in the coffin of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his colleagues in the Fatah leadership. Again, as in the case of the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, the Palestinians have learned that the diplomatic path leads them to a dead end, while terror gets settlers out of the territories and abductions spring hundreds of people out of jail, wrote Akiva Eldar, chief political columnist for the daily Haaretz.
Indeed, that was undoubtedly not lost on most Palestinians, thereby further discrediting the moribund peace process that has been agonizing for years and that the Quartet is now desperately seeking to resurrect, with little hope of success, judging from Israel’s latest real estate plans in Jerusalem..
More people will be convinced that the only thing Israel understands is power and force. This kind of achievement undermines the negotiation process, Abdul Sattar Kassem, a political science professor, and Hamas supporter, told the LAT.
It will destroy him (Abbas). It will show the only people who can release real prisoners are Hamas, while he can’t do anything, Hani al-Masri, a Palestinian political analyst predicted two years ago…
Some in Israel condemned the agreement for similar reasons.
The deal is a prize for terrorism. It isn’t a deal. It is capitulation, wrote the columnist Ben-Dror Yemini in the daily Maariv.
As a result, it is safe to say that a negotiated peace settlement is further away than ever. The Palestinians are divided and too feeble to extract Israeli concessions, while the Israelis are under no pressure to come to the negotiating table, and will only do so if they can dictate the terms of any agreement.
This situation may explain why Marwan Barghouti is not on the list of security detainees to be released.
Sometimes referred to as the Palestinian Nelson Mandela, he was jailed for life in 2004 by the Israeli authorities on five counts of murder.
Barghouti, it must be said, has a less inflated view of himself.
 I am not a terrorist, but neither am I a pacifist. I am simply a regular guy from the Palestinian street advocating only what every other oppressed person has advocated-the right to help myself in the absence of help from anywhere else, he once wrote.
He was found guilty of providing financial aid and weaponry to militants who, in a series of attacks, killed four Israelis and a Greek Orthodox monk, and of being the leader of Fattah’s military wing, the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade.
The latter organized suicide bombings during the Second Intifada inside Israel.
Barghouti declined to present any defense, considering his arrest illegal, and the court illegitimate. When the prosecutor branded him a terrorist, he retorted occupation is terrorizing, in Hebrew…
Barghouti remains influential in Palestine because he advocates not only negotiations with Israel (which have, after 17 years, failed to advance the Palestinian national agenda) but also resistance.
Betting on negotiations alone was never our choice. I have always called for a constructive mix of negotiations, resistance, political, diplomatic and popular action, he wrote in 2009.
Barghouti was born in 1958, in Kabar, near Ramallah.
He joined Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement when he was 15.
Three years later, he was jailed for four years by the Israelis for belonging to a terrorist organization (Fatah, also the party of Abbas, was considered as such by the Israelis at the time).
While in jail, he learned Hebrew and completed his high school education. He also claims to have been tortured by his jailers...
He would eventually earn a M.A. in International Relations from Birzeit University.
In 1987, he became one of the leaders of the First Intifada, or uprising, against the Israeli occupation, in the West Bank.
As a result, he was arrested by the Israelis, and deported to Jordan.
After the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1994, Barghouti returned to the West Bank, and supported the negotiation process with the Israelis.
He also launched a campaign within Fatah to purge the movement, riddled with corruption, and another against Arafat’s security forces, who he accused of numerous human rights violations.
In 1996, he was elected to the Palestine parliament, the Palestinian Legislative Council.
After the Camp David Summit ended in failure in 2000, Barghouti lost faith in the process, and when the Second Intifada erupted in September 2000, he became a vocal leader of the Palestinian resistance.
He also advocated the right of the Palestinians to self-defense in the Occupied Territories.
While I, and the Fatah movement to which I belong, strongly oppose attacks and the targeting of civilians inside Israel, our future neighbors, I reserve the right to protect myself, to resist the Israeli occupation of my country and to fight for my freedom. If Palestinians are expected to negotiate under occupation, then Israel must be expected to negotiate as we resist that occupation, he wrote in the WP in 2002.
I do believe that I am one of the prominent people who support the peace process, he declared in a 2001 interview, however.
One can negotiate peace with Israel while simultaneously resisting its occupation of Palestinian land, according to Barghouti.
When we are talking about resistance, this also includes armed resistance against the Israeli occupation. This is very clear…As I said before, in principle, we oppose any kind of military activity inside Israel, but we do believe any activity inside the Occupied Territories is legal, he added.
If the Israelis tomorrow make a decision for full withdrawal from the territories, we will distribute flowers for the Israelis soldiers as they withdraw from the Occupied Territories…
We are talking about the 1967 borders. We recognized Israel, and we constantly repeat that. The question is not if we recognize Israel, but if Israel recognizes us, he told the interviewer, Jefferson Fletcher.
It must be said however, that during the Second Intifada, some Palestinian radicals had absolutely no qualms about targeting civilians inside Israel, making no distinction between Israel proper and the Occupied Territories.
Barghouti and the moderates were thus unable to contain the resistance movement.
We gave the OK to resistance by the gun against Israeli troops and settlers. We were against operations inside Israel, but it happened out of our control.
We made a big mistake, Ziad Abu Ain, now a deputy minister in the Palestinian government (in the West Bank) told The Guardian in 2009
In 2001, Barghouti narrowly escaped an assassination attempt when his car was struck by an Israeli missile…
Five years later, while in jail, Barghouti co-wrote the Prisoners’ Document (officially known as the National Reconciliation Document), along with the jailed leaders of four other Palestinian factions, including Hamas. It called for the establishment of a Palestinian state on the territories occupied by Israel in 1967 (thereby implicitly confirming Hamas’s recognition of the state of Israel) and the right of return of refugees.
Hence, Barghouti is a potentially credible partner in any genuine peace process, precisely because his legitimacy and popularity as a representative of the Palestinian people has rested on his two-track approach of negotiation and resistance.
Some in Israel are conscious of this.
Zelev Schiff, a prominent Israeli defense analyst now deceased, once described Barghouti as a charismatic, popular and worthy Palestinian negotiating partner, according to The Guardian.
He may be the only leader able to reunify the Palestinian nationalist movement, currently bitterly divided between Fatah in the West Bank, and Hamas in Gaza.
A peace agreement signed by Barghouti would thus have a genuine chance of winning the support of the Palestinian people.
Are the Israelis currently interested in striking such a deal?
The prevailing status quo, characterized by the division of the Palestinian nationalist movement into two antagonistic factions, serves the agenda of an Israeli government not keen on reaching an accord that will entail evicting Israeli settlers from occupied Palestinian land.
Arguably, the current division between the Palestinian factions works in Israel’s interests and Barghouti’s commitment to draw Fatah and Hamas back together might represent a serious strategic threat. Many in Israel’s intelligence agencies apparently think so, wrote The Guardian in 2009...
Nothing much has changed these last two years…
As long as the Palestinians are divided, and devoid of an undisputed leader, Israel is under little pressure to resume serious negotiations.
Similarly, Hamas was in no hurry to facilitate the release of a leader that could eventually dominate Palestinian politics and reunify the Palestinian nationalist movement at its expense…
Israel shall release Marwan Barghouti the day it is truly interested in negotiating a genuine and balanced accord with the Palestinians.
Until then…
(the above photograph of Marwan Barghouti was found here)

We really feel alone…

Yesterday, Syrian foreign minister Walid al-Moallem urged foreign nations not to support or recognize the recently established Syrian National Council (SNC).
The architects of the organization succeeded in uniting all the various currents of the political opposition to the Assad regime.
Speaking after having met a delegation of Latin American countries (including Cuba and Venezuela) supporting Assad, the foreign minister said the following:
I am not interested in what they (the SNC) are trying to achieve. And we will adopt strict measures against any country that will recognize the illegitimate council.
What those measures would be he did not elaborate…
Formed earlier this month in Istanbul (after a long protracted process), the SNC is composed of 190 members representing the nation’s principle currents: the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamic party, the Damascus Declaration, a pro-democracy organization led by dissidents; the Syrian Revolution General Commission, comprising forty opposition groups; representatives of various Kurdish parties, and other minorities, such as the Christians and the Alawites (a Shiite sect to which belong Assad and the dignitaries of his regime).
Significantly, it also represents those inside Syria leading the protest movement, the Local Coordination Committees. In fact, about 50% of the members are currently within Syria, resisting the regime.
A general assembly of all 190 members is to take place next month. A president of the council is to be elected then.
The council will function as a parliament, where policy options are to be reviewed and debated by its members.
The aim of the council is to offer support and encouragement to those protesting and thus risking their lives in Syria; propose an alternative to the vicious Assad regime; fill any leadership vacuum should the regime eventually collapse, and provide the international community with a legitimate representative of the Syrian people.
This had been a demand formulated by the West for some time.
I think the (international) pressure requires an organized opposition, and there isn’t one. There’s no address for the opposition. There is no place that any of us who wish to assist can go, declared last August Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
The council’s spokesman, Bourhan Ghalioun,  professor of  Contemporary Oriental Studies at the Sorbonne in Paris, clearly affirmed the organization’s purpose: achieve the goals of the revolution to topple the regime, including all of its components and leadership, and to replace it with a democratic pluralistic regime, he said.
I think that this (Assad) regime has completely lost the world’s trust. The world is waiting for a united Syrian (opposition) that can provide the alternative to this regime, so that they can recognize it. The council denounces the (regime’s) policy of sectarian incitement…which threatens national unity and is pushing the country to the brink of civil war, he also declared.
The formation of the SNC did send an important message to the Syrians, but also to the international community, therefore.
The Syrian opposition had succeeded in bridging its differences at last, in order to achieve a common goal: hasten the demise of a brutal, illegitimate regime.
This is the real deal. I’m optimistic because finally we have a comprehensive council that we can say legitimately represents the revolution. This will reinvigorate the protesters and give us a voice with the international community, Shakeeb al-Jabri, an activist exiled in Beirut, told Liz Sly of the WP.
The council will also work towards obtaining the support and recognition of foreign powers in the near future.
We need to mobilize the international community to cut its relations with this regime and support the struggle of the Syrian people, Bourhan Ghalioun told Aljazeera.
Today, French foreign minister Alain Juppé, who had welcomed the formation of the SNC, declared that France would establish relations with it.
A number of urgent issues however, currently divide the council and will need to be addressed.
The first is whether to continue protesting peacefully against a regime unabashed about shooting at its own people, or take up arms as a matter of self-defense.
The other pressing question involves the role, if any, of the international community (and in particular of NATO), in ousting Assad.
The council rejects any outside interference that undermines the sovereignty of the Syrian people, Mr. Ghalioun declared in Istanbul. Yet, more ambiguously, he had also requested that the international community protect the Syrian people from the declared war and massacres being committed against them by the regime.
Can the uprising sustain itself without outside military help?
The situation is deteriorating rapidly on the ground. It’s a war, and the people inside are calling for all the help they can get, Radwan Ziadeh, a Syrian dissident based in Washington, and a member of the council, told Liz Sly of the WP.
Many Syrians inside the country, bearing the brunt of the regime’s brutal and savage repression favor an outside intervention. Many of those in exile do not…
The question has yet to be resolved. This will be the most difficult decision for the council to take, Ziadeh added.
In any case, NATO has yet to show any particular interest in replicating the Libyan campaign in Syria. We took on responsibility in Libya because there was a clear UN mandate and because we received clear support from countries in the region. None of these conditions are fulfilled in regards to Syria, and these conditions are essential, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen declared last week.
In order to ensure that the Syrian opposition (unlike its Libyan counterpart in Benghazi) does not have a foothold inside the country from which to march on Damascus, Assad has done his utmost to crush all attempts by the most virulent supporters of the uprising (army deserters) to resist militarily, particularly in Rastan and Hama.
If the regime can prevent the opposition from controlling even a swath of Syrian territory from which to organize armed resistance against Assad, then those currently in power probably have faith in their ability to outlast the protest movement.
The Syrian regime feels it can weather this storm, David Lesch, a professor of Middle East studies at Trinity University in San Antonio, suggested to the LAT.
In addition, the regime warned its enemies that it would not hesitate to launch missiles on Tel Aviv should the West intervene militarily…
In essence, Assad is ready to do whatever it takes to remain in power…
The Syrians need our help.
We really feel we are alone. We feel no one is helping us. And after all the bloodshed we have seen, we want any kind of help, an activist told the WP.
We owe the brave Syrian people all the help that we can provide…
Actively supporting the SNC would be a significant first step.
France seems to have taken it.
May their American, British, German (etc., etc.) allies quickly follow suit…
(the photograph above of Bouhran Ghalioun is by Reuters)



 

Our revolution will eventually win...

They summoned him outside but he refused to go.
A month before, they had already attempted to kill him…
As a result, the assassins stormed his apartment (located in Qamishli, in the Kurdish north east of Syria) and opened fire.
Mashaal Tammo, 53, founder and leader of the Kurdish Future Movement Party, a liberal organization, was killed.
His son, Marcel, and a party activist, Zahida Rashikilo were wounded in the attack.
Tammo’s politics were inclusive, his goal being to forge a democratic and pluralistic Syria. Not everyone in the Kurdish community shared his views…
He was also a member of the executive committee of the recently established Syrian National Council. The umbrella organization seeks to unite the disparate strands of the Syrian opposition movement.
Released after having spent over three years in jail for his political activities, Tammo had been organizing protests against the Assad regime in Qamishli.
The Syrian Arab News Agency, an official organ, claimed that Tammo was killed by an armed terrorist group. It elaborated by stating that those responsible were gunmen in a black car who fired at his car.
Tammo’s funeral was held the next day, on Saturday.
Some 50,000 people thronged the streets of Qamishli to pay him tribute, but also to vent their anger at the Assad regime.
All of Qamishli is out today. The funeral is turning into a massive protest, Mustafa Osso, a lawyer and Kurdish activist, told AP.
A general strike was also organized in the city on this day of mourning.
The crowds chanted, leave, leave; others demanded Assad’s execution.
Some also shouted Azadi, the Kurdish word for freedom.
Now Tammo has become a flame of the revolution, Abdul Ghafar Mohammed, a Qamishli resident, told CNN (Tammo‘s first name, Mashaal, means flame in Arabic…).
Predictably, Syrian troops fired into the crowd, killing five mourners.
The targeting of a prominent member of the Syrian opposition, of Kurdish origin, could prove an ominous development, however.
The Kurds, accounting for some 10% of Syria’s population of twenty million have long been a neglected minority, victims of discriminatory policies…
They cannot learn the Kurdish language in their schools, nor operate their own radio stations. Many have even been denied Syrian citizenship. At the outset of the uprising last spring, however, Assad promised to reverse course on this issue, in an obvious attempt to mollify them…
In essence, the Assad regime is no friend of the Kurdish people…
And yet, the Kurds have failed so far, to support wholeheartedly the anti-Assad opposition movement.
This long oppressed minority (also oppressed in Turkey, and until recently, in Iraq) is suspicious of Arab intentions generally and has little faith that a post-Assad regime would treat the Kurdish people more benevolently…
There is a mutual lack of trust between the two sides; the Kurds are worried. They already feel excluded from the decision making process and they fear for the future, a Syrian opposition leader told AP.
The killing of Tammo sparked outrage in Syria’s Kurdish province and may alter the political calculus of its political leaders…
This blood is precious to them (Kurds), they will not give up until the regime is overthrown and until the execution of Bashar al-Assad, one of Tammo’s sons, Fares, told Aljazeera.
My father’s assassination is the screw in the regime’s coffin. They made a big mistake by killing my father, he declared to the NYT.
Assad may indeed rue the day his security forces killed Tammo, should the Kurds now opt to support vigorously the anti-regime movement.
There’s a real potential for it (the security situation) getting out of hand, Peter Harling, an analyst at the International Crisis Group, and who is based in Syria, told Anthony Shadid of the NYT.
Why then, make the potentially tragic and lethal mistake of killing a prominent Kurdish leader?
Is Assad still in control of the security apparatus, or did he grant it carte blanche to crush the movement as it saw fit?
What is clear however is that the regime has decided to confront the opposition movement solely with repressive, military means.
The security solution essentially amounts to giving a free hand to the security services to dramatically raise the levels of violence in an attempt to restore the wall of fear. In doing so, the regime has undermined its own ability to think and act politically. This is sheer violence, with no limits, a « solution» that has every chance of creating many new problems, Harling added.
Also on Friday, another prominent opposition figure, Riad Seif was arrested next to a Damascus mosque, but not before he was so severely beaten that he had to be hospitalized.
As far as the regime is considered, it is acting in self-defense.
Syria is the target of terrorist threats, its deputy foreign minister told the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva on Friday.
He brazenly repudiated Western condemnations of the Assad regime’s behavior.
The culture of human rights is a disease. We have to take into considerations that the conduct of some of those developed countries is not honorable in the area of human rights. Syria has been subjected to a series of criminal attacks…accompanied by an unprecedented media campaign of lies and allegations, he added, according to AP.
The regime, quite clearly has neither the intention of changing strategy nor of seriously taking into consideration the Syrian people’s demands for change.
Even Russia, which last week, along with China , vetoed a UN Security Council resolution condemning the violence, calling for an end to the repression and hinting at possible sanctions, at an unspecified future date, seems to be slowly coming to this conclusion….
If the Syrian leadership is unable to undertake these reforms, it will have to go, Russian President Dimitry Medvedev declared Friday.
Last month, the day after he narrowly averted an assassination attempt, Tammo declared the following: we’re living in chaos, and the regime is pushing us toward even more chaos. But we’ll never stop, according to the NYT.
As a result, the violence in Syria does seem to be escalating.
Razan Zeitouneh, a Syrian activist, director of the Syrian Human Rights Information Link, who was this year’s recipient of the Anna Politkovskaya Award granted by the Group RAW in War, corroborated this view (for some background on Anna, see here, and on the prize,  here).
The situation is getting more and more violent every day. Now the average number of people killed by the security (forces) and army is about 20 daily. The army still surrounds many cities and villages, every day new areas and new cities are raided by the security (forces) and the army. Hundred of people get arrested daily, the cases of (people) getting killed under torture is increasing, day after day. Kidnapping people from the street and killing them is also increasing, especially in the city of Homs. In spite of all of that, the protests are still going on, she told RFE/RL.
There is no doubt that the protesters and our revolution will eventually win. If we don’t believe that we will win, we couldn’t continue under all this violence by the regime. We couldn’t bear all these crimes against our people. I’m sure that every single Syrian believes that the revolution will win in the end, she concluded.
Let us hope that victory will be achieved quickly and that the West does its utmost to support the Syrian opposition any way it can, and continues to apply pressure on Syria’s few remaining friends, in particular China and Russia.
They must be made to realize that Assad’s days are numbered and that supporting the Syrian people is not only the wise thing to do, but also the right thing to do…
(the above photograph of Qamishli residents mourning Mashaal Tammo is by Safin Hamed AFP/Getty  Images)

Once again, China and Russia come to Assad's rescue...

Yesterday, China and Russia vetoed a UN resolution condemning Syria for its military crackdown against an overwhelmingly peaceful protest movement that has killed over 2,700 people, according to the UN.
The resolution, drafted by France, assisted by Britain, Germany and Portugal, demanded an end to the violence, condemning arbitrary executions, excessive use of force and the killing and persecution of protesters,  and that those responsible for the repression be held accountable.
It also called for measures guaranteeing fundamental rights, such as freedom of speech, and of assembly, and demanded the release of all political prisoners….
The language on possible sanctions was modified three times in order to mollify potentially reticent members, and in the final draft, the term sanction is not even mentioned…Instead, the resolution merely refers to the possibility of sanctions in the future should Syria persist in defying the will of the international community.  
The vote in the Security Council was nine in favor, and two opposed.
India, South Africa, Brazil and Lebanon abstained…
China and Russia voted against it, and since both possess a right of veto as permanent members of the Council, the resolution was rejected…
Its supporters were both disappointed and outraged.
Alain Juppé, France’s Foreign minister denounced Syrian President Assad as a dictator who is massacring his people,  and pledged continued support for those in Syria demanding the respect of their fundamental rights.
France’s Ambassador to the UN condemned the veto as a rejection of the extraordinary movement in support of freedom and democracy that is the Arab Spring.
The US voiced its outrage at the resolution’s defeat.
During this season of change, the people of the Middle East can now see clearly which nations have chosen to ignore their calls for democracy and instead prop up desperate, cruel dictators, Susan E. Rice, the US ambassador declared.
The Russians justified their rejection of the resolution, considering it too confrontational. This approach is against the peaceful solution of the crisis on the basis of a Syrian national dialogue, the Russian ambassador, Vitaly Churkin declared.
The Chinese could not countenance the notion interference in Syria’s affairs…
In fact, both nations feared that a more robust resolution could lead to a Libya-like Western intervention in Syria, a proposition they could not possibly support.
Rice denounced this objection as a cheap ruse on the part of those nations determined not to lose their lucrative arms deals with Syria.
This is not, as some would like to pretend, a Western issue. We had countries all over the world supporting this resolution today, and we have countries throughout the region who’ve been very clear that the brutality of the Assad regime has to end and that the behavior of the regime is absolutely intolerable, she said.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan indicated that his nation would adopt its own sanctions against its neighbor.
Out of necessity our package of sanctions will come into effect, he declared.
 Furthermore, to increase the pressure on Syria, the Turks announced that they would be holding military maneuvers lasting eight days in Hatay province, which borders the Syrian state…
Hence, the Russians and Chinese once gain came to the rescue of the brutal and despicable Assad regime…
This is hardly surprising, considering how Russia handled Chechnya’s quest for independence…
As for the Chinese, no one has forgotten how the despotic regime responded to the demands for freedom and democracy on the part of its youth one June day in 1989...
The Syrian people are unlikely to forget those nations that preferred to support a brutal despot victimizing his own people, instead of those brave citizens brazen enough to march in their cities' streets demanding justice, freedom and democracy…
(the photograph above of the Syrian child protester was found here...)

Drone justice...

Last Friday, Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical American Muslim cleric, was killed in a US drone attack in Yemen.
Another American who was with him, Samir Khan was also killed.
Mr. Awlaki’s name had been added to the CIA and Joint Special Operations Command hit list in April 2010.
The ACLU, on behalf of Nasser al-Awlaki, the cleric’s father, had filed a lawsuit last year in order to prevent the administration from targeting him, but to no avail.
He was the only American citizen to be included on the hit list…
President Obama justified the killing thus:
Earlier this morning, Anwar al-Awlaki, the leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula was killed in Yemen. The death of al-Awlaki is a major blow to al Qaeda’s most active operational affiliate. Awlaki was the leader of external operations for al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
In that role he took the lead in planning and directing efforts to murder innocent Americans. He directed the failed attempt to blow up an airplane on Christmas day 2009. He directed the failed attempt to blow up US cargo planes in 2010. And he repeatedly called among individuals in the United States and around the globe to kill innocent men, women and children to advance a murderous agenda.
Hence, the President repeatedly emphasized that Mr. al-Awlaki was a leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and that he directed specific attacks on US targets.
As a result, the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki was justified, regardless of whether he was an American citizen or not…
What evidence did the President or his administration present to justify the killing of an American citizen, one who had never been charged with or convicted of any crime?
None.
Since the President asserted that Mr. Awlaki was affiliated with al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or rather its leader, and this organization affiliated with the original al Qaeda, formerly led by the now deceased Osama ben Laden, then he was a legitimate target, since Congress had approved the use of military force against the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks.
The fact that the drone attack took place in Yemen and far from the original theater of war, Afghanistan was irrelevant, since the war on terror is a global one…
As a belligerent, Anwar al-Awlaki forfeited all due-process rights.
What constitutes due process in this case is a due process in war, an administration official told the WP, therefore death by drone attack.
Furthermore, the Justice Department, in a legal memorandum, confirmed the legality of ordering the killing of a US citizen.
The document was produced following a review of the legal issues raised by striking a US citizen and involved senior lawyers from across the administration. There was no dissent about the legality of killing Awlaki, the officials said, wrote the WP.
Those who defended the killing of Mr. Awlaki made similar arguments.
Before someone like Mr. Awlaki is targeted, multiple intelligence sources support the conclusion that he is a dangerous threat, top lawyers from many agencies scrutinize the action, policy makers at the highest levels of government approve the action after assessing its legal and political risks, and the Congressional intelligence committees are informed about the intelligence community’s role in the operations, wrote in the NYT Jack L. Goldsmith, a former assistant attorney general in the preceding administration.
Satisfied therefore, that all relevant legal issues had been adequately addressed, and since the principle parties inside the administration agreed with the memorandum’s conclusions, Awlaki became a legitimate target, and killed at the first opportunity…
What was the administration’s legal analysis?
We do not know, for the document remains confidential, and the administration refuses to comment further on the matter.
A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment. The administration officials refused to disclose the exact legal analysis used to authorize targeting Awlaki, or how they considered any Fifth Amendment right to due process, according to the WP.
The Fifth Amendment stipulates that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.
In essence, why Mr. Awlaki was denied his basic constitutional rights remains classified and is none of our business…
As such, we shall have to satisfy ourselves with the President’s claims that Mr. Awlaki was the leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula…the leader of external operations for al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, that he took the lead in planning and directing the efforts to murder innocent Americans.
If the President says so then it must be true…
The President’s word will have to suffice, we are implicitly told…
We shall have to trust him and remain confident that he acted appropriately and that the nation’s laws were fully adhered to…
Did he not swear to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States?
Yet, if the evidence against Mr. Awlaki is so convincing, why not share it with the rest of us?
If the finest legal minds of the administration concluded, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Mr. Awlaki was a dangerous terrorist masterminding evil plots against the American people, why should these conclusions remain classified?
Secrecy can only fuel suspicion, and rightly so, for the historical precedents in this field are devoid of any ambiguity…
In the run up to the invasion of Iraq, US intelligence agencies were under great pressure to produce evidence the administration urgently required to justify its imminent attack.
As a result, the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate confirmed with high confidence the existence of Iraq’s WMD programs…
That is what was expected from the intelligence community by the Bush/Cheney administration, and that is precisely what it delivered.
Prior to the war, the politicization of intelligence gathering and analysis was blatant and extensive, according to Paul Pillar, a former official of the National Intelligence Council.
A similar phenomenon can be detected concerning the Bush/Cheney policy of enhanced interrogation techniques, to use the official expression then in vogue.
The Bush/Cheney administration was obviously seeking legal cover to utilize methods universally considered torture, even by previous administrations, against high value terrorist suspects.
The Bush/Cheney euphemism covered such methods as grabbing and slapping detainees, forcing them to remain standing while handcuffed for forty hours or more; confining  naked detainees in cold cells while regularly dousing them with cold water and, of course, waterboarding.
Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo and Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee dutifully complied, drafting a series of legal memoranda now infamously known as the Torture memos.
At my direction, Department of Justice and CIA lawyers conducted a careful review. They concluded that the enhanced interrogation program complied with the Constitution and all applicable laws, including those that ban torture, Georges W. Bush wrote in his memoirs…
As a result of this legal authorization, a number of suspects were waterboarded including Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah.
The former was subjected to this part of the enhanced interrogation program some 183 times, the latter a mere 83 times, at least…
Through these memos (subsequently made public by the Obama administration in April 2009, following an ACLU FOIA request in court) Justice Department lawyers authorized interrogators to use the most barbaric interrogation methods, including methods that the US once prosecuted as war crimes. The memos are based on legal reasoning that is spurious on its face, and in the end these aren’t legal memos at all-they are simply political documents that were meant to provide window dressing for war crimes, concluded Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU National Security Project, upon their release.
The documents released today provide further confirmation that lawyers in the Office of Legal Counsel purposefully distorted the law to support the Bush administration’s torture program, added Amrit Singh, staff attorney with the ACLU.
Should a man’s fate truly depend on advice and information coming from these quarters?
Is there any reason to believe that the intelligence services and the Justice Department are less politicized today then they were two years ago?
What is clear is the following: government departments run by political appointees cannot be trusted to deliver objective, unvarnished, and potentially undesirable advice to their employers in the White House.
As a result, should matters of signal importance such as constitutional rights, that concern every citizen in the land, be confiscated by politicians and their appointees, who purport to be the sole custodians of our best interests and most fundamental rights?
Should not evidence that can lead to the execution of a citizen be reviewed by independent parties?
What are courts and judges for?
President Obama has just asserted the hubristic authority to execute who he wants, when he wants, where he wants (even his fellow citizens), at his sole discretion!
In a democracy, a leader does not possess that kind of power.
If he does, then it is incumbent on the people and their representatives to deprive him of it.
American citizens are not to be trusted with the evidence that justified the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, since it will not be released.
Would they come to a different conclusion?
If not, why the secrecy?
In Obama’s America (a legacy of the Bush/Cheney administration he chose not to repudiate), the function of the citizen, kept willfully ignorant, is to salute the leader for his boldness, and express his gratitude for the President’s successful efforts to keep him safe…
Does a democracy worthy of the name function thus?
Drone justice just dispatched Anwar al-Awlaki into the next world.
That he was a radical who condoned violence in fiery sermons posted on YouTube and in interviews is irrelevant, or is the First Amendment, like the Fifth, obsolete as well?
Incidentally, the young American Samir Khan (who edited al Qaeda's online magazine Inspire) was also killed in the attack..
He had never been charged with any crime either.
Presumably, knowing and meeting with Awlaki was sufficient to deserve the death penalty.  Up to seven people may have killed in the drone strike...
Awlaki and Khan yesterday…
Who shall it be tomorrow, who shall be obliterated by a drone or series of drones, after the President of the United States determines in total secrecy that that particular individual is an enemy of the US and thus deserved to die?
(the above photograph of a drone strike was found here)

Defectors flee Rastan as Syrian army tanks occupy the city...

Today, after six days of fighting, the Syrian army retook control of Rastan, a city located 160 kilometers north of Damascus, the Syrian capital, where hundreds of defectors from the armed forces had taken refuge.
On Friday, the Syrian high command had dispatched 250 tanks to the city in order to crush the defectors’ resistance.
In fact, the defectors, members of the Khaled bin Al-Walid Battalion (named after the first Arab conqueror of Syria)  chose to leave the city after enduring heavy machine gun fire and shelling, facilitating the deployment of Syrian troops in Rastan.
Because of major reinforcements and the weapons used in Rastan by Assad’s gangs, we have decided to withdraw in order to better wage the struggle for liberty, the defectors declared in a statement, according to Al Jazeera.
The Syrian army has taken complete control of Rastan, and 50 tanks left on Sunday. Many houses have been destroyed there and the humanitarian situation is very bad. We have information that dozens of civilians were killed and buried in the gardens of houses as the army shelled the town, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, based in Great Britain, said.
Obtaining precise information from witnesses in Rastan was difficult, the regime having cut all phone and cell phone services in the city…
On Sunday, however, protests were planned throughout Syria, particularly in university towns.
Today is the day of the universities uprising. Everyone knows the fear universities inspire in the regime, a post on The Syrian Revolution 2011 Facebook page said.
(the photograph above of a tank in the city of Rastan was found here)