The World Today: Syrian reformer turned prosecutor fears retaliation

Eleanor Hall reported this story on Tuesday, July 12, 2011 12:42:00

ELEANOR HALL: To Syria now where international tensions have soared over an assault by regime loyalists on the US and French embassies in Damascus, which the regime's security forces failed to prevent.

The US secretary of state Hillary Clinton responded by declaring that president Bashar al-Assad was not indispensable and that the US had nothing invested in him remaining in power.

But the Syrian president said he was still working for a political solution to the crisis, convening a reform dialogue in the capital.

A short time ago I spoke to a Syrian-American who was working with the Syrian government on democratic reform until the protests began.

Yaser Tabbara is the executive director of the Syrian American Council. He says he was horrified by president Assad's response to the protests and since March has been helping to build a crimes against humanity case against the regime for the International Criminal Court.

He spoke to me this morning from Chicago.

Yaser Tabbara, the US secretary of state said today that the Syrian government failed to protect US diplomats from pro-government demonstrators and that the US now has nothing invested in Bashar al-Assad remaining in power, that he is not indispensable.

Is the Syrian leader likely to be alarmed by this?

YASER TABBARA: Oh absolutely. I think that what the Syrian revolution has done is put pressure on the international community to declare Assad to be an illegitimate leader of Syria and it is the action of Bashar al-Assad and his cohorts and his regime that has escalated the rhetoric of the international community more and more.

I think that the lack of action on behalf of the security forces in Syria to protect American diplomats and Western diplomats is a clear indication that it's not orchestrated, it's clearly something that is condoned by Bashar al-Assad and his security thugs to send a message to the world that he does not care about being an outlaw.

ELEANOR HALL: And yet at the same time the Assad government is right now convening a dialogue on political reform in Damascus. Is there any chance of a political settlement at this stage?

YASER TABBARA: Unlikely, very highly unlikely. You have to realise that this so-called dialogue that has been commissioned by the Syrian government and the regime is basically a sham. This dialogue that they called for was boycotted by all major opposition figures in Syria and outside of Syria. It's basically a dialogue with the regime. It's a monologue.

ELEANOR HALL: Yaser Tabbara, you're clearly now a critic of the regime but you worked with Bashar al-Assad on democratic reform right up until these protests began. Why did you work for him and were you surprised at the way he responded to the protests?

YASER TABBARA: Just a point of clarification, I did not work for Bashar al-Assad, what I, I have always been a true believer in gradual democratic reform and I was among those who really had been calling on Bashar al-Assad to move forward and lead this country, lead your people into a peaceful, democratic transition.

A lot of free-thinking Syrians have been engaged with the Syrian government in the past to help on programs of development, long term development. My focus was on reforming the higher education system in Syria but again I made up my mind on March 15th and after I saw that they have demonstrated the most and utmost inhumanity in their bloody crackdown.

And that was the turning point for me and many, many free thinking Syrians that do not necessarily belong to an opposition movement pre-March 15th, which is the date that the Syrian revolution took place.

There was a measure of surprise, I'm not going to deny that. I think that yes he had a reputation of being a reasonable man, he had a reputation of being someone who is concerned of reform and he had a reputation of being somewhat civil, but he decided to shoot to kill protesters.

So far since March 15th, 1,500 people have been killed in cold blood, 20,000 people have been arrested. We have 1,000 forced disappearances. We have reports of mass graves. I mean this is, you know, has risen to a level of crimes against humanity. That is the sort of, you know, bloody dictator that Bashar al-Assad turned out to be.

ELEANOR HALL: Well you're now helping to build the case against the Assad regime at the International Criminal Court. Do you think Bashar al-Assad will take any notice of it?

YASER TABBARA: Look as late as last Friday there have been reports of about 3 million people on the streets of Syria. The situation has gotten to the point of no return, especially as the regime has its tanks and its guns pointed to the heads and chests of the Syrian people.

Those crimes we are saying amount through the international criminal law to crimes against humanity and as such we're asking the Security Council to refer the case of Bashar al-Assad and his regime to the International Criminal Court and we believe that that will put even more pressure on Bashar al-Assad and his regime to again minimise the casualties and shorten the period of that crackdown.

ELEANOR HALL: You think that he will actually listen?

YASER TABBARA: Well it's definitely a method of deterrence. I think that, you know, if it gets to the point where he will be looked at as an international outlaw and as someone who is wanted by international justice, I think he will come to his senses hopefully and realise that this is not going to only affect his grasp on power but is going to affect him personally and it's going to affect his future and the future of those around him.

In fact we feel that international criminal law and, you know, the tools that it employs are there to deter dictators such as Bashar al-Assad from committing these sort of crimes.

ELEANOR HALL: Now Yaser Tabbara, you worked with the regime until just before the protests began on reform from within. Now you're working against it. Do you feel personally in danger because of your involvement in this International Criminal Court case?

YASER TABBARA: Absolutely, without a question I feel in danger. In fact I have received a number of notifications that my name is on some sort of a black list and I've also received reports that my name has been reviewed and reported on in Syrian TV as one of these political traitors of Syria and the Syrian people.

I mean this is a reality that we are living through and I think we will continue to live through it until we see a free democratic Syria.

ELEANOR HALL: What do you fear that the regime could do to you?

YASER TABBARA: I do not put it beyond this regime to do anything. I mean we've just witnessed so much instability and brutality by, on behalf of this regime since March 15th and so again, this is the sort of regime we're dealing with.

ELEANOR HALL: Yaser Tabbara, thanks very much for talking to us.

YASER TABBARA: Thank you for having me.

ELEANOR HALL: Yaser Tabbara is the executive director of the Syrian American Council and you can listen to a longer version of that interview on our website.

Original link: Syrian reformer turned prosecutor fears retaliation

Syrians plead with SA to condemn human rights violations: Video

The South African government continues to oppose a UN Security Council resolution aimed at condemning the suppression of anti-government protests in the Arab Republic of Syria. South Africa, along with Brazil, Russia, India and China, are the only nations of the 15-member peace organisation who remain unconvinced that condemnation is necessary.

Original post: Syrians plead with SA to condemn human rights violations

A Syrian-American in Chicago Fights for Democracy in his Homeland

This Fourth of July, as Americans across the country celebrate the country’s freedoms, Syria’s government is cracking down on its citizens’ democratic rights. Syria’s government has sent tanks into the city of Hama, two days after tens of thousands of protesters demonstrated there, and called for an end to the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. The Government has cut off power and telephone lines, and arrested scores of people, in an attempt to suppress a movement that mirrors the upheaval in Tunisia and Egypt.

Original post: A Syrian-American in Chicago Fights for Democracy in his Homeland

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 Other options: Windows Media / MP3 Download (0:22)

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

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

By Sabrina Eaton, The Plain Dealer

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

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.

Original post: Orsam: An Interview with Yaser Tabbara