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SYRIA: Rights Groups Fly By Ever Darker Night

Ali Gharib

WASHINGTON, Oct 17 2007 (IPS) - The fragile human rights situation in Syria shows little prospect of improving, with authorities moving consistently in the wrong direction and the international community, politically weakened in the region, able to do little more than watch, a major rights group said Wednesday.

“By isolating human rights groups, the government of Syria is not only stifling the right of the activists to express themselves or associate freely,” said the report by Human Rights Watch, a New York-based watchdog group. “It is depriving the vibrancy of a society in which individuals can hold the government accountable for human rights violations.”

The report decried both the legal framework of an ongoing state of emergency that allows the government to strictly regulate organizations, as well as the “intrusive scrutiny and harassment” that often befalls people involved in human rights work in the Arab nation of nearly 20 million. Activists are often subject to travel restrictions, arbitrary detention, arrest and trial, HRW says.

Contacted and made aware of the report, Ahmed Salkini, press secretary at the Syrian embassy in Washington, had no comment on the findings.

“The human rights community in Syria has grown in important ways in the last few years,” said the director of the Middle East programme at Human Rights Watch, Sarah Leah Whitson, in a press release. “But they remain under siege by authorities that cannot fathom any criticism of their record.”

Any association in Syria must be registered with the state in order to legally operate, but the repressive dictatorship there denies most applications and forces the groups into an illegal but slightly tolerated grey area that is difficult to operate in.

“They never had any legal NGOs [non-government organisations]”, commented Joshua Landis, the co-director of the University of Oklahoma’s Centre for Peace Studies and author of the widely regarded Syria Comment blog. “You can fly by night, which can get you into trouble.”

The few organisations that do operate with the consent of the state are there to deal with the Iraqi refugee crisis, which has displaced nearly 1.4 million Iraqis to Syria. The government realised that they needed money to deal with the situation, but the international organisations in a position to help them required that grants go through NGOs, so a limited civil society structure was created.

The blanketing status of illegality for other activities makes it easy for the state security services to shut down whatever organisations draw their ire – usually those that go to the press to publicise violations, a common thread in most national and international human rights groups.

The national organisations are also strictly prohibited from dealing with international groups under the penal code, making it difficult for the groups to get access to outside funding, though some civil society groups do receive aid through foreign embassies in Damascus.

Landis described a situation where there is a red line that cannot be publicly crossed. When that line is crossed, as when Syrian human rights lawyer Anwar al-Bunni signed a public declaration calling for better relations with Lebanon, the individuals are arrested and their organisations shut down.

The groups that manage to stay open are those that toe the line of the ruling Baath Party and President Bashar al-Assad.

“They are careful not to go screaming and yelling every time they see something bad happening,” Landis noted, citing the delicately subdued operations of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Syria. The IRC is allowed to operate because they aren’t “making political hay out of this”, he said.

Foreign workers, like reporters, have to enter Syria on student and other visas because the government cannot give any legitimacy to their work. That status allows them to be easily kicked out of the country by security services because the government can say that they were not given permission to conduct these activities.

“By being so strict,” explained Landis, “they have a reason to throw people out because you are almost always breaking a law there – every minute of every day.”

However, domestic rights workers face a much greater threat from the government – harassment often leading to mysterious detentions, prison, and trials on trumped up security charges such as “spreading false or exaggerated news that weakens the spirit of the nation”, the crime that al-Bunni was convicted of and is serving a five year prison sentence for.

Oftentimes, Landis said candidly, these activists disappear and are moved through a system of prisons operated by Syrian intelligence agencies that operate off the books and with no oversight. Usually after about six months they resurface at regular prisons and are entered into the system. Only at that time is their arrest made public knowledge and their families notified.

In addition to recommendations to the Syrian government, the report also suggested further international involvement in the human rights situation in Syria, calling on the EU, its member states, the international community and United Nations to adhere to human rights law and maintain pressure on Syria to relax the state of emergency that it uses to justify a police state.

But there is little hope for the success of pressure brought to bear upon Assad’s government, as those efforts so far have only yielded small token reforms.

“Syria has been in isolation for two years. There is a total shutdown,” Landis said. “That’s as severe as you can get.”

Yet Asad maintains a tight grip on power by promoting himself as pro-“security and stability”, and recent developments in the region back this up and make him look palatable to the people of Syria.

He points to neighbouring Iraq – ravaged by a U.S.-led invasion ostensibly aimed at creating a democracy there and the resulting humanitarian crisis of massive proportions and immense suffering – and quite legitimately paints the situation in Syria in a positive light in comparison.

“The Iraq situation has created a much higher threshold for human rights violations in Syria,” lamented Landis. And Assad “has become a humanitarian because he has taken in 1.4 million Iraqi refugees.”

The recent explosion of the internet has given Syrians a new way of communicating, but this means of free association has also been targeted recently by a law produced by the Syrian treasury. The government will often shut down entire platforms rather than monitor the web site by site.

But like the general policies, it is difficult for the international community to address the internet crackdowns because Assad can just point at his neighbours, oftentimes western allies such as Saudi Arabia.

“Very few people have been arrested because of the internet compared with other Arab countries,” noted Landis. “Assad has maybe 2,000 people in jail, and that’s a very good record in the Middle East. No one is getting killed in Syria. It makes a dictator look good.”

The U.S. is continuing a hard line with regards to isolation, but foreign policy realists both there and in Europe are pressing for increased engagement with Syria. At least one expert fears that little appears primed for change if isolationist policies are alleviated and the international community deals directly with Asad.

Landis concluded that “it is useless to just slap him on the wrist once in a while, but we don’t know what else to do, so we’re going to back to it.”