Thursday, June 30, 2011

WKSU: Kucinich: a matter of interpretation

Syrian American Council says it finds it hard to believe that the representative's quotes about Syria were simply mistranslated
Story by Anna Staver

Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich is saying that Syria’s official government news agency mistranslated his comments that appeared to praise Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Kucinich has been visiting Syria and Lebanon this week, and the Syrian Arab News Agency quoted him Tuesday as saying that Assad is beloved by his people and committed to reforms. More than a thousand Syrians have been killed since protests erupted in March.

Yaser Tabbara is the executive director of the Syrian American Council, and he says he is not buying Kucinich’s explanation.

Tabbara explains

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Tabbara says he and others in his community were shocked by the Cleveland congressman’s comments given what he calls Kucinich’s outstanding record on human rights issues. Kucinich has said he believes that a diplomatic solution is possible in Syria.

Original post: WKSU: Kucinich: a matter of interpretation

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Syrian opposition blasts Rep. Dennis Kucinich



The head of the largest U.S.-based Syrian opposition group on Wednesday accused Rep. Dennis Kucinich of grandstanding by meeting with President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus and charged he was making “irresponsible, brash” statements about the situation in the country.

“Mr. Kucinich is jumping on the bandwagon of a hot issue right now without having the background information,” Yaser Tabbara, executive director of the Syrian American Council, told POLITICO.

He is, perhaps, taking a public relations opportunity, and unfortunately, despite his record of standing up for what’s principled and what’s right in terms of human rights abuses, he has gotten it severely wrong on Syria,” Tabbara added.

While Kucinich described his trip as a “fact-finding mission,” Tabbara, a Chicago attorney, said the situation in Syria is well known and called such a trip unnecessary.

“There is an international consensus as to what’s taking place in Syria constituting crimes of an international and grave nature of the Syrian regime,” Tabbara said. “Yet he makes these irresponsible, brash statements in support of the dictator ruling Syria and the person deemed to be an illegitimate president. It’s mind-boggling and confusing.”

Kucinich told CNN on Wednesday that he met with both the Assad government and opposition groups this week in Damascus.

“It’s really important that people who are involved with making policy meet with both sides,” he said.

Kucinich’s spokesman told POLITICO that the Ohio Democrat will seek to meet with the Syrian council upon his return to the U.S.

“I share the same concerns about the violence in Syria which the Syrian American Council rightly decries,” Kucinich said in a statement on Wednesday relayed by his spokesman. “I went to Syria to meet with as many parties as I could, including leaders in the opposition, people who are directly involved with trying to bring change to Syria. I also wanted to learn if President Assad was himself prepared to accept their just demands for freedoms and reforms.”

Louay Safi, chairman of the SAC, said Kucinich “probably was misled” before traveling to the country.

“He is lending legitimacy to a regime that has lost legitimacy,” Safi said. “This is for internal consumption. For many Syrians, if a congressman comes to see Assad, they think that he represents the government. … Living under a dictatorship, they think that anyone who meets with the president from congress is representative of the U.S. position on Syria.”

Kucinich, in the brief CNN interview, did not directly answer when asked whether his visit would legitimize the Assad regime.

“I met with the opposition. I heard what they had to say,” he said. “I met with the government. I heard what they have to say.”

Tabbara and Safi said Kucinich at no point has been in contact with their organization.

Original post: Syrian opposition blasts Rep. Dennis Kucinich

Kucinich's 'Mistranslation' Excuse, Unpacked

URI FRIEDMANJUN 29, 2011

Three days into his unofficial "fact-finding" mission in Syria, Ohio Democrat Dennis Kucinich is beginning to feel the heat back home for meeting with Syria's Bashar al-Assad and appearing to defend the President amidst the regime's brutal response to the Syrian uprising. On Tuesday, the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency quoted Kucinich as praising the regime for seeking to end the violence, characterizing Assad as "highly loved and appreciated by the Syrians," and telling reporters at his hotel that some foreign news outlets want to "give a wrong picture about what is going on in Syria."

In a statement on Tuesday, Kucinich claimed, rather vaguely, that SANA may have inadvertently "mistranslated" some of his remarks, perhaps in part because of the "degree of appreciation and affection their state-sponsored media has for President Assad"--hardly a ringing denunciation of the agency's report. Foreign Policy's David Kenner didn't buy that explanation, since he imagined Kucinich made his remarks in English and SANA wouldn't have had to translate them. In what appears to be the only other account of the press gathering, CNN's Hala Gorani, who is in Damascus on assignment, wrote on Twitter, "Kucinich said Assad sees himself as 'father of the country' and is really 'concerned' about situation."

How does Kucinich's office respond to Kenner's skepticism about the mistranslation claims? The congressman's communications director, Nathan White, tells The Atlantic Wire that while Kucinich made his remarks in English, the journalists he was speaking with were using Arabic-language translators. White assumes that the SANA story was written up in Arabic and translated back into English, though he can't confirm this assumption (indeed, there is an Arabic version of the story on SANA's website). White also can't confirm whether the journalists at the hotel were from SANA.

Meanwhile, a backlash is brewing. In an editorial today the congressman's hometown Cleveland Plain-Dealer writes that while Kucinich says he's in Syria to "promote peace"--a cause he's undoubtedly committed to--"that isn't the likely effect of accepting the Syrian government's invitation to visit when an unknown number of Syrian protesters are dead and 12,000 refugees have fled to Turkey. Kucinich is allowing Assad to use him as a propaganda tool. And not for the first time" (Kucinich also met with Assad in 2007 and praised him on Syrian TV for pursuing peace in Iraq).

Criticism is coming from both the left and the right. Salon's Justin Elliott notes that Kucinich's alleged statements about Syrians' love for Assad and the regime's efforts to end the violence contradict "the reported facts" on the ground. The American Spectator's John Tabin writes that "while I have no doubt that SANA made Kucinich's remarks sound more pro-Assad than they were, that hardly absolves him of responsibility for appearing in Damascus in the first place." In comments to The Daily Caller, the American Enterprise Institute's Michael Rubin goes further: "Just as former Kennedy-era attorney general Ramsey Clark shilled for Ayatollah Khomeini, and British parliamentarian George Galloway shilled for Saddam Hussein, it seems that the Syrian dictator has found his useful idiot."

Salon raises another point: What does this incident mean for Kucinich's well-known anti-war credentials? If SANA's report is accurate, Elliott argues, "the congressman's reputation as someone who is serious about human rights will sustain serious damage." Politico situates the visit with Assad in a "string of eccentric incidents" involving the one-time presidential candidate. Kucinich's decision to "sue a House cafeteria over an olive pit that cracked his tooth has negatively affected his reputation," the paper writes, and "his April 2011 appearance on the Daily Show as a ventriloquist was seen by critics as bizarre." More recently, Kucinich has grabbed headlines for his opposition to President Obama's Libya campaign.

Update: Politico reports that there's another group mad at Kucinich: the Syrian-American Council, a U.S.-based Syrian opposition group. The organization's executive director, Yaser Tabbara, states that while Kucinich has a "record of standing up for what's principled and what's right in terms of human rights abuses," it's "mindboggling and confusing" that he's now "making these irresponsible, brash statements in support of the dictator ruling Syria and the person deemed to be an illegitimate president."

Here's a clip of Gorani's interview with Kucinich at his "press conference" in Damascus on Tuesday, which appears to have been more of an informal press gathering (in the clip, analyst Fouad Ajami also criticizes Kucinich):

Syrian group wants Rep. Dennis Kucinich to apologize for Syria comments



WASHINGTON, D.C. - A Syrian American group on Wednesday urged Cleveland Rep. Dennis Kucinich to apologize the Syrian people for making comments it called "political propaganda" and "out of touch with reality" after he visited the embattled Middle Eastern country this week and met with its president and opposition leaders.

Syrian American Council executive director M. Yaser Tabbara of Chicago said in an interview that the nation's president, Bashar al-Assad, has "lost his legitimacy" because he "heads a regime that is engaged in severe and horrid human rights violations against his own people."

More than 1,000 people have been killed since anti-government protests began in Syria, and many more have been arrested.

Tabbara called Kucinich's assertion that people in Syria want Assad to remain in power and reform the government "clueless" and "very misinformed." He said Assad is responsible for atrocities committed by the armed forces, wants to stay in power at all costs, and is using Kucinich for propaganda purposes.

Kucinich met with Assad on Monday, and later told The Plain Dealer that Assad takes calls for change seriously and wants to address his people's concerns. In an emailed response to the Syrian American group's claims, Kucinich said he shares the concerns about violence that the group "rightly decries."

"I went to Syria to meet with as many parties as I could, including leaders in the opposition, people who are directly involved with trying to bring change to Syria," Kucinich said. "I also wanted to learn if President Assad was himself prepared to accept their just demands for freedoms and reforms."

He said "the importance of trying to reach out to obtain as many views as possible cannot be underestimated" and that he would be happy to speak with the group and other interested parties when he returns to the United States.

Kucinich says that a Tuesday report by Syrian's official government news agency, which claimed that he said Assad is "highly loved and appreciated by the Syrians" mistranslated his remarks.

He also said a State Department claim on Tuesday that his trip was arranged by the Syrian government was incorrect. The State Department issued a clarification on Wednesday, which said Kucinich "is traveling at his own instance and at the request of his constituents." His visit is financed by Cleveland's Arab American Community Center for Economic and Social Services. The group did not return requests for comment on Wednesday.

A Damascus-based participant in Kucinich's Tuesday meeting with political opposition members supported Kucinich's contention that many in Syria want Assad to stay in power and implement reforms.

Ibrahim Hamidi, the Damascus Bureau Chief for the pan-Arab newspaper Al-hayat, said in an email that he told Kucinich that Syria is "very different from Tunisia and Egypt."

"In these two countries, people went down to the street to change their presidents," said Hamidi, who stressed that he is not personally part of the opposition because he is an independent journalist. "But, in Syria, people and many of the opposition want President Assad to lead the reform process."

Another participant in Kucinich's meeting, Damascus engineer Salim Kheirbek, said in an email that Syrians seek "radical reforms to be done by the president," after a "national dialogue."

"After almost four months of demonstrations and violence, the demonstrators couldn't throw out the regime and at the same time the regime couldn't finish with the protesters the matter which led to a national crises," said the email from Kheirbek, who was jailed by the Syrian regime for a dozen years.

Kheirbek said opposition members believe having Assad implement reforms makes sense because he's legally Syria's president, "and this is the only way (until now) to do reforms safely and keep the country far from chaos and unknown destiny."

"We ask to have Mr. Assad to be implementing the reforms in a certain transition period not because this is good for the president but because this is good for Syria and its people," Kheirbek's email said. He said the fact that some people in Syria like Assad "should not neglect the other fact that there are much more people who ask for radical changes which should transfer Syria from its dictatorship regime to democratic, multiple parties, etc . . . Syria with free people."

Original post: Syrian group wants Rep. Dennis Kucinich to apologize for Syria comments

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

CNN.com: Syrian ambassador to France denies having resigned



















By the CNN Wire Staff

Paris (CNN) -- Syria's ambassador to France, Lamia Shakkour, denied Tuesday that she has resigned her post, declaring late in the day that she would remain in her job until President Bashar al-Assad no longer wants her to remain in it.

"At no moment have I thought about doing anything other than serving my country," she told CNN affiliate BFM in an interview carried out in front of a picture of Assad at the Syrian Embassy in Paris.

Shakkour's status had been in doubt since the afternoon, when the television network France 24 broadcast a telephone interview from a woman it identified as Shakkour. During the interview, the woman said she was resigning because of violence in Syria.

"I cannot support the cycle of extreme violence ... ignore the young men, women and children who have died," she said.

But that interview was quickly followed by another telephone interview, broadcast on Syrian state TV, in which a woman also identifying herself as Shakkour denied having resigned, saying, "I am an integral part of this nation."

The woman in the Syrian interview said she plans to sue the French news channel and give the proceeds to the children of "martyrs."

That threat was repeated in Shakkour's BFM interview, which was carried out on camera. "I am filing a complaint to the French tribunal and also to the international tribunal, and there will probably be some measures against France 24," she said.

Shakkour denounced what she said was France 24's misrepresentation of her. "It was a lie," she said. "I accuse them of misinterpretation, false information, misuse of my identity and passing messages under my name."

Shakkour accused the network of following an agenda. "It's part of a campaign of misinformation by France 24, since the beginning of March, in which it gives voice only to dissidents of Syria and it falsifies videos."

In an interview with CNN carried out after the two dueling telephone interviews but before the BFM on-camera interview, France 24's deputy editorial director, Renee Kaplan, called the situation "very puzzling."

Kaplan said her network had invited Shakkour to be a guest on Tuesday night's program, which focused on Syria. "She has been a guest on our network before," said Kaplan, who added that station personnel reached Shakkour on a cell phone number that she had answered in the past.

Asked about Shakkour's later statement that she was not planning to resign, Kaplan said, "Something may have occurred between the time she made the declaration on our network and the time she made the declaration on another network."

Kaplan added, "We are confident that the person we addressed on air was she. There is no other reason to believe that anyone else would have answered on the number."

The confusion came the day before the U.N. Security Council is to discuss a proposed resolution regarding Syria. It was not clear when a vote on the resolution would take place, though Britain and France have said they would like it to take place by Friday.

The Security Council has been criticized for failing to act to stem the violence in Syria. Russia blocked a previous French-British resolution on Syria.

On Tuesday, a delegation of representatives from Syrian and international human rights groups visited the International Criminal Court to press for an investigation into human rights abuses in Syria. The Hague, Netherlands-based court has conducted a similar investigation in Libya.

The group asked ICC officials to review evidence of alleged abuses in the nation, which has been wracked by anti-government protests and a government crackdown for nearly three months.

It is hoping that investigators will determine that crimes could have been committed, a conclusion that might pressure the U.N. Security Council to refer the case to the ICC.

"The international community has to do something to prevent this," said M. Yaser Tabbara, a Chicago attorney working with human rights groups. "Pressure has to be mounted."

An ICC spokesman confirmed that the delegation submitted information and that it will review whether the court has jurisdiction in the case.

The issue of ICC involvement in the Syrian situation has been broached by others, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Australia's foreign minister.

"It must also take decisive action and refer the situation in Syria to the International Criminal Court," Philip Luther, Amnesty International's deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa, said Monday.

"Those responsible for the brutal crackdown of pro-reform protesters must no longer be allowed to get away with murder," he said.

However, getting the Syrian case before the ICC would not be easy.

Syria is not a party to the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the ICC, meaning the court has no jurisdiction over crimes committed in Syria by the forces of President Bashar al-Assad.

But intervention by the ICC on the alleged crimes committed in Syria could occur, Tabbara said.

Under one scenario, Syrian authorities could simply accept the jurisdiction of the court, he said.

The court also would have jurisdiction if people who committed the alleged crimes in Syria or victims of Syrian abuses are citizens of a country that is a signatory to the Rome Statute, he said.

And the U.N. Security Council could decide to refer the situation to the court.

Tabbara said the delegation met with Mark Dillon, the head of the ICC prosecutor office's information and evidence unit.

The group provided a formal "communication" under an article of the Rome Statute with evidence of abuses and asked the court to pursue the "necessary preliminary examinations and analysis" of alleged crimes.

Tabbara is hoping that ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo will determine that what is occurring in Syria amounts to a systematic campaign of crimes against humanity.

If he does, it could "highlight the seriousness of the situation internationally" and pressure the Security Council to refer the case to the ICC.

Tabbara noted that Libya also is not a signatory to the Rome Statute, but the U.N. Security Council referred the case to ICC jurisdiction after seeing evidence of alleged crimes there.

The delegation included family members of victims who have been killed on camera and who have a pending lawsuit in U.S. courts against the Syrian regime.

The activists said they have documented more than 1,168 deaths, 3,000 injuries, 893 forced disappearances, 11,000 arbitrary detentions and the existence of mass graves.

Among the groups that signed the communication are the Syrian National Organization for Human Rights, the Syrian Center for Human Rights Studies, the Union of Syrian Kurds in the Netherlands, and Insan, a human rights groups.

Criticism of Syria mounted Tuesday after scores of people died in recent days in the cities of Hama and Jisr Al-Shugur.

The British Foreign Secretary William Hague told parliament on Tuesday that al-Assad is "losing legitimacy" and should "step aside."

He added that the Britain is working to persuade other countries to lobby for U.N. Security Council sanctions against Syria.

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Syrian groups ask Hague court to probe killings



* Rights groups present evidence to war crimes court

* NGOs asked court to assess crimes against humanity

* ICC has no jurisdiction in non-member state Syria

By Svebor Kranjc

THE HAGUE, June 7 (Reuters) - Syrian and international human rights groups urged the world's top war crimes prosecutor on Tuesday to investigate the killing of more than 1,000 civilians during protests against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The prosecutor's office at the International Criminal Court said it had received the request but its jurisdiction could only cover crimes committed in Syria by nationals of ICC member states.

"We have documented a large number of deaths, injuries, forced disappearances and arbitrary detentions," said U.S-based lawyer Yaser Tabbara.

"These are crimes that can be categorised as crimes against humanity as they were state policy, widespread and systematic."

Syrian and international rights groups say they have drawn hope from the ICC prosecutor's speed in calling for the arrest of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and others over the violence in Libya, and a willingness to investigate Ivory Coast and Kenya.

Damascus has not signed the 2002 Rome Statue that set up the court, which means the ICC does not have jurisdiction in Syria, unless the U.N. Security Council refers it to the court.

Amnesty International called on the Security Council to refer Syria to the ICC.

"Given the violence that existed in Libya at the time and the evidence in respect to the commission of crimes in Syria, I think that the situation in Syria is just as serious, if not more so," said Philip Luther at Amnesty International.

European calls to have the U.N. Security Council formally rebuke Syria stalled in May when it became clear Russia would use its veto, but France says it is ready to ask for a draft resolution despite Russia's threat. [nN06298313]

Assad has made some reformist gestures, such as issuing a general amnesty to political prisoners and launching a national dialogue, but the NGOs hold him, his brother Maher al-Assad and intelligence chief Ali Mamlouk responsible for the deaths.

"I escaped from Syria in 1981, when I was 17. I've been in a foreign country for 30 years now, while the regime in Syria is still the same," said Ibrahim Akkari, one of a small group of protestors who accompanied Tabbara to the ICC in The Hague to present the request. "Our people have had enough of it." (Additional reporting by Aaron Gray-Block in Amsterdam)

Friday, June 3, 2011

Worldview: In Turkey, anti-Assad Syrians plan for the future

by Worldview Jun. 03, 2011

The estimates so far are that several dozen people have died today in protests in Syria. Today’s protests were dedicated to the “children of freedom.”

At least 30 children have died in Syria’s protests so far, most notably 13-year-old Hamza al Khatib. The videos of his tortured body may prove a turning point in the effort to oust Assad. Syrian opposition leaders have met this week in Turkey to start a road map to a post-Assad Syria.

From Turkey, Chicago attorney and democracy activist Yaser Tabbara discusses the latest in Syria.

Original post: Worldview: In Turkey, anti-Assad Syrians plan for the future

Thursday, June 2, 2011

Al Jazeera English: Protesters 'killed' in Syrian town


Crackdown in Rastan continues, as opposition conference ends with declaration demanding Syrian president's resignation.

Syrian security forces have killed at least 13 civilians in the latest crackdown on pro-democracy protests, rights groups say, as opposition leaders meeting in Turkey called for president Bashar al-Assad to step down and lay the framework for democratic elections to be held within a year.

Security forces, backed by tanks, have laid siege to the central town of Rastan since Sunday in an effort to crush protests against Assad's rule there.

The 13 civilians were killed by gunfire from snipers and security forces storming Rastan, which is under curfew, said Ammar Qurabi, the head of the Syrian Organisation for Human Rights, and Razan Zaitouna, a lawyer.

Earlier, Zaitouna said that 41 people had been killed in the town, including a four-year-old girl who was killed as security forces shelled neighbourhoods on Tuesday.

Five of the victims were buried in Rastan on Wednesday, she said. Syrian forces also killed nine civilians on Tuesday in the town of Hirak, according to Qurabi.

Syrian state media reported that four soldiers were killed by "armed terrorist groups" in Rastan on Wednesday were buried on Thursday.

"We have become refugees in our own country,'' a resident of Rastan told the AP news agency. He said that he had fled his home in the centre of the town to escape arrest and was now sleeping in the woods.

"My family and sisters are still there, and I don't know how they are doing,'' he said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

Call for Assad's exit

At the conference in the Turkish city of Antalya, Syrian opposition activists called for Assad to resign immediately and cede powers to his vice-president.

"The delegates have committed to the demands of the Syrian people to bring down the regime and support the people's revolution for freedom and dignity," said a communique issued by 300 delegates at the conclusion of the two-day meeting, which brought together various opposition groups, activists and
independent figures, some from inside Syria.

The opposition also decided to establish a 31-member council to act as an international representative for protesters in Syria, reported Mohamed Vall, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Antalya.

Abrahim Miro, a Syrian activist of Kurdish ethnicity who was at the conference, said the committee "is represented by all the factions, all different ethnic groups and all different religions", adding that "it must show the world that they can make a strong voice to support the revolution inside Syria".

"They have to show the world that they are capable of being the face of this revolution in Syria," he told Al Jazeera.

The communique issued by the conference attendees also opposed any foreign intervention in Syria from outside powers, such as has been seen in Libya.

About 50 Assad supporters demonstrated outside the conference venue on Thursday, brandishing posters of the Syrian president and branding the opposition as being "on the payroll of the United States and Israel".

'National dialogue'

President Assad has recently launched a "national dialogue", pledging to free hundreds of political prisoners and promising to investigate the killing of 13-year-old Hamza al-Khateeb in an attempt to blunt growing anger.

State television said Assad had set up a committee and charged it with "formulating general principles of dialogue that will open the way for the creation of an appropriate climate in which the different elements can express themselves and present their proposals".

The opposition has previously dismissed calls for dialogue, saying that this can take place only once the violence ends, political prisoners are freed and reforms adopted.

The demand that prisoners be freed was partially met on Wednesday when, according to a rights activist, hundreds of detainees were released from prisons across the country under an amnesty declared by Assad on Tuesday.

Washington, which has been increasing pressure by slapping sanctions on key regime members, said the release of "100 or so political prisoners does not go far enough".

"The release of some political prisoners is not the release of all political prisoners. We need to see all political prisoners released," Mark Toner, the US state department deputy spokesman, told reporters.

Amnesty exclusions

Human rights organisations have echoed this sentiment.


Al Jazeera's Mohamed Vall reports from Antalya

"Hundreds of people have been released," Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said.

"Fifty of them are from Baniyas, including the 76-year-old poet Ali Derbak," he added, but "thousands of political prisoners remain in jail and are to be released at any time".

"Leaders of the communist Labour Party were unable to benefit from the amnesty as the decree excluded people convicted of joining an organisation to change the social and economic status of the state," Rahman said.

More than 1,100 civilians have been killed and at least 10,000 arrested since protests against Assad's autocratic government erupted in mid-March, Human Rights Watch said.

Speakers at the Turkey conference said Assad's amnesty offer did not go far enough and came too late. "We demanded this amnesty several years ago," Abdel Razak Eid, an activist from the Damascus Declaration, a reformist group launched in 2005 to demand democratic change, said. "But it's late in coming."

A mobile video by one of the delegates showed the delegates vowing not to end dialogue until Syria's people were free.

Assad's legitimacy 'nearly out'

Other international responses to the presidential decree were tepid at best, though US secretary of state Hillary Clinton did say on Thursday that her country believed that Assad's legitimacy has "nearly run out".

Clinton also indicated that there was a lack of international consensus on how to move forward in order to appear on "the right side of history".

Alain Juppe, the French foreign minister, has demanded "more ambitious and bolder" action from Syria. "I fear that it might already be too late," he told France Culture radio.

Turkey, while not dismissing the decree outright, also asked for deeper change.

Meanwhile in Syria, residents called for nationwide protests to take place on Friday, to commemorate the nearly 30 children killed during the uprising.

Syria has denied that a boy aged 13, whom opposition activists say died under torture, had been abused by security forces, labelling the accusations as lies.

A medical report published by Syrian official media said three bullets killed teenager Hamza al-Khatib and that other apparent wounds on his body were due to decomposition, not security force brutality.

Coroner Akram al-Shaar indicated that there was a period between the initial inspection and the handover of the corpse which was presided over by a legal commission including the judge.

"The report closes the door on the lies and allegations and shows the truth," the state-run news agency SANA said.

The activists said the boy had disappeared since taking part in a demonstration in the southern region of Daraa on April 29, which he decided to join after police killed his cousin.

The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) has said that at least 30 children have been killed by gunfire since the revolt began. The government insists the unrest is the work of "armed terrorist gangs" backed by foreign agitators.


Wednesday, June 1, 2011

ORSAM: An Interview with Yaser Tabbara



SYRIAN OPPONENTS - 3: AN INTERVIEW WITH SYRIAN HUMAN RIGHTS LAWYER AND ACTIVIST YASER TABBARA


In addition to the participants from Syria in the “Change in Syria Conference”, organized in Antalya; opponents, most of whom have to live in Europe, in the U.S., and in Arab countries, participated in the conference as well. We talked to the Syrian activist Yaser Tabbara, who lives in the U.S., who is the member of the human rights organization called “CAIR-Chicago”, an also who is working as an human rights lawyer in his own office in the U.S., on the Conference and the future of Syria, in Antalya. Although the activities of the activists, who live in the U.S. and in Europe, are limited in Syria, they assume a major role in grabbing the attention of the world public opinion towards Syria, and in providing an international pressure on the Assad regime.

ORSAM: Could you introduce yourself for ORSAM readers?

Yasser Tabara: My name is Yasser Tabara. I’m a Syrian American attorney. I’ve been practicing law for almost ten years in Chicago. I was born in Chicago, raised in Damascus and then went back to the United States. I studies Political Science and my focus was International Human Rights and Civil Rights Law. I established is a civil rights organization for the defense of the rights of Arabs and Muslims live in the United States in Chicago. Right now I have a law office.

What is your position in the opposition who is gathering here today?

I don’t think it is accurate to call it an opposition gathering, in fact I think what this gathering has proven to the entire world that the position of the Syrian regime and the criminality of the regime is a mainstream position. It is no more a marginal opposition. You know, the Syrian opposition has always been described as disorganized, fragmented, basically weak and non-existent in Syria. Whether it is true or not, it is not what I’m going to get into. My point is that the perception of the opposition by the outside world reflected on the anti-regime position. That’s not true, because there are many free-thinking Syrians that were independent and did not belong to a political group and did not have a political agenda. Basically, those people came together from all over the world to send a very strong message that “We are in support of the Syrian Revolution”. This is something that this conference accomplished.

The committee which is planning to be established will have division among the opposition groups, and some of them are Muslim Brotherhood and Kurds. What do you think about that?

Think that’s another misperception or misconception about this conference. I think this conference is in no way intending to form a transitional council like the one we saw in Libya. This conference specifically is to do one thing only and that is basically support the Syrian Revolution inside the practical and pragmatic steps. And this step is to create a coordinating council; a committee, not even a council. That is basically to bring the Syrian activists from all over the world. There have been a lot of efforts that take place by Syrians in the US, Europe, in Arab countries, all over the world. But these efforts have not been coordinated very well. This conference is attempting to achieve coordination and synchronicity between all these activists, so they maximize the effect of their work. So the results out of this conference is to ensure the continuity of the work of this coordination, we need some sort of a coordinating body. That coordinating body is going to be a committee which is to be elected. There are a number of ways for us to pick that committee and the most popular way that people have agreed upon is to elect. Obviously through voting, you want to ensure that everybody is represented, classic opposition figures, the Muslim Brotherhood, or the Kurds, etc. So that it could be a truly representative committee.

How do you find the conference? Can you find a common ground between different opposition groups?

When I first came to this conference, I had very low expectations. I think I was very pleasantly surprised for a number of reasons. One was to see that amount of division, this sort of perceived problems, visions, predicted that this is going to fail because people were shouting marches and all that stuff. That actually did not take place. It’s been surprisingly civilized and productive. Yes, there are egos, there are people who are classic leaders and do not like to work with others but that has been overshadowed, in my opinion, by the presence of the youth, who is here without an agenda, with only one idea in mind that is to work. There is a lot of youth that you might have observed that is here to do exactly that. The other thing that is happening is to establish a number of workshops, committees to basically discuss ways to coordinate, for example the legal coordination agenda, the preservation of evidence, so that we could put together legal cases. Other areas of media activism, organizing protests basically comes out fully coordinated to bring together tens of thousands, hopefully hundreds of thousands Syrians together across the world at the same time in support of the Syrian Revolution. So a lot of these action items are being produced. That is the second thing that is pleasantly surprising to me as well.

I experienced another conference in another Arab country and when I attend that conference, I can feel that they want revolution. They come together and work. But in this conference, they are trying but they are different. Now I can’t really feel they want to do something together towards revolution. Maybe this is the first time they come together to talk something. But I don’t feel that they want revolution. I joined the Druze meeting in Lebanon, I felt that everybody is thinking the same thing.

This is the first time in the modern history of Syria that you have people from many different backgrounds. Syria is an extremely rich mosaic of religions, ethnic backgrounds, political ideologies, and it has always been said that those who basically stock the fear of sectarianism talk about that the alternative to Basher Assad’s regime is terrible or bleak, we don’t have any future, and we don’t have any hope. But this conference has demonstrated that despite all of these differences we still come together, we still meet we still put together, we are doing our workshops, and we are working towards common action. I would encourage you to attend some of the workshops that take place today. I think what you have observed is the political side of this conference. Any political process is an adversarial process. This group has a particular agenda that it seeks to pass, that group is represented heavily than that, you see the give-and-take. My view is that is a healthy demonstration. The Syrians are meeting for the first time in many years in a democratic process. Of course you are going to see some give-and-take, some conflicts, but nothing is basically developing into disastrous situations. We haven’t seen a disaster. We haven’t seen someone leaving the conference and saying “this is not what I hoped”. We haven’t seen that. And honestly I expected that. I’m very happy and I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

Do you want to give some message to Turkish government and people?

My first and foremost message is that I think everyone in this conference will be repeating the same exact message. Everyone is extremely grateful to the Turkish people for hosting us, for taking us in, for understanding our plight, for supporting our cause and for opening their country to us like this. This is highly politicized situation; we understand that this is not a very pleasant and easy situation for Turkish people and government. We completely appreciate that. Some people were worried yesterday at dinner that somebody announced the Syrian regime announced amnesty to all political prisoners and the immediate reaction was a demonstration. The demonstration basically said that it was too little and too late. At the end of the demonstration, the protesters made a point “Shukran, shukran Turkiyya”. Everybody was saying it in one voice. That truly reflected the sentiment of the people here. Now on a political level, we would like Turkish government to take even a harsher stance on Basher Assad’s government. We told them what you have done so far is amazing, but you need to take a step further. That step is to call the Assad regime unequivocally an illegitimate leader of Syria to ask the Assad regime to step down and to give weight to democratic process.

Thank you very much.

* This interview was carried out during the “Change in Syria Conference”, which was organized in Antalya, on June 1st 2011, by Prof. Dr. Veysel Ayhan, ORSAM Middle East Advisor; and Oytun Orhan, ORSAM Middle East Expert.