To Change

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Explosion in Damascus Kills One

My room was shaking the minute I heard that sound. I thought it was Israel, the neighbors thought it was a tank of gas, but only the dead knew what it was.

Update: no "militant" was killed, but a fighter was assassinated.

Syrian Bloggers Campaign to Free Fellow Blogger Tariq Biasi

It all started when one did: Ahmad published several entries concerning the detention of Tariq, the jailed Syrian blogger, but it is only when his blog was added on the SYPlanet aggregator that I had the chance to be aware of Tariq's situation. I reacted by contacting all the bloggers who reported on Tariq's detention and asked for their help in organizing a campaign to help secure Tariq's release. And here we are; Ahmad purchased and designed the websites, Arwa and Omar contacted human rights organizations and news agencies, Okbah is following up Tariq's news with a lawyer, Omar created a group on Facebook. I also contributed by updating the websites and creating an online petition demanding Tariq's release.

As it stands, we're just five. We are five Syrian bloggers writing from our censored Syria.

You can find our Free Tariq campaign by clicking here for an English version, and here for the Arabic.

Our Statement:

Our mission is supposedly guaranteed in the introduction of Syria's Constitution: “The freedom of the country is only protected by free citizens.”

Article 28 in the constitution dictates that: “Every accused person is innocent until he is convicted by a final court judgment.”

Tariq’s online speech does not constitute a violation of the law. In fact, he actually acted on the basis of freedom, which as stated earlier, is guaranteed by the Constitution via Article 38, which states: “Every citizen has the right to express his opinion freely and openly, orally and written and in all other means of expression. He also has the right to contribute in the control process and in the constructive criticism to ensure the safety of national reconstruction."

Feel free to read the full statement.

Please take a minute and consider signing our petition.

You can also help us spread the word by joining our group on Facebook.

If you wish to post a banner of solidarity on your blog or website, you may choose from a list of banners here. Insert the image URL within the code here and you'll get a badge of the banner you've chosen. Please contact us for any questions, or if you have a banner of your own to contribute.

Why Support Us?

Some of the arguments made unfortunately undermine the effectiveness of the likes of this campaign, assuming that there is one goal, which is simply and strictly to literally "free" the imprisoned blogger or person. This campaign however goes way beyond such claims and aims to protect the very principles of freedom and human rights. To answer and refute some of these arguments, the Free Tariq Coalition has interviewed the Syrian human rights activist and lawyer Razan Zeituna and asked her a couple of questions regarding the validity of such campaigns:

Free Tariq: Are these campaigns important? If so, in what sense?

رزان زيتونة: ‫هذه الحملات مهمة جدا، أهم ما فيها أنها أخرجت قضايا حريات الرأي والتعبير من ثنائية العلاقة ما بين المنظمات الحقوقية والسلطة، لتجعل منها قضية رأي عام، تهم دوائر أوسع من الأفراد والجماعات

‫وهي إلى جانب الاهتمام ب والدفاع عن أفراد بعينهم تعرضوا لانتهاكات في حقوقهم وحرياتهم الأساسية، تنشر الوعي بقضية الحريات والانتهاكات.

‫هذا من جانب، من جانب آخر، مضى زمن طويل في منطقتنا العربية، حيث كانت مختلف الانتهاكات تمارس بحق الأفراد بدون أي اهتمام إعلامي وحقوقي فعلي، هذا الأمر بدأ يتغير الآن، هذه الحملات إلى جانب ما تمارسه من ضغط معنوي على السلطات الحاكمة، تعطي الأفراد المنتهكة حقوقهم جزءا مما يستحقونه، باعتبارهم أفراد لهم أسماء وأحلام ...الخ، أي أنها تؤنسن هذه القضايا ‫وتنقلها من إطار العموميات والمجرد إلى إطار الشخصي.

Razan Zeituna: These campaigns are very important, mostly for unleashing the freedom of speech causes from the dual relationship between the regime and human rights organizations, to make it a public affair that would interest wider circles of people and groups. And while these campaigns lobby for and defend people whose basic rights and freedoms are abused, they also raise awareness on the cause for free speech.

Furthermore, it has been a long time in the Arab region since human rights abuses been taken place without effectual attention from media and human rights agencies. This is changing now; these kinds of campaigns and as they put symbolic pressure on the government, it gives the individuals whose rights are invaded, part of what they deserve, and treat them as people with names and dreams…these kinds of campaigns personify and humanize the abstract causes and transfer them from generalizations frames into personal frames.

Free Tariq: What about Tariq himself, how would this campaign be beneficial to him?

رزان زيتونة: هي حق له قبل أن تكون مفيدة له أم لا، ‫في مثل أنظمتنا، الحكومات لا تكترث كثيرا بالضغوط من هذا النوع، هذا لا يعني أبدا أن لا تمارس مثل هذه الضغوط.

Razan Zeituna: It's his right, before it can be beneficial to him or not. With governments like ours, these kinds of pressures don’t affect the regimes much; this is no reason why we should not practice these pressures in the first place.

And Esra'a Al Shafei, director of the Free Kareem campaign notes that the aim of activism is "to change," and stresses on the movement of change:

Activists generally have a passion towards a set of issues that they feel need to be changed, and they are inspired enough to be part of the movement that changes these things, either partly or entirely (if they are part of a movement that is big and influential enough, but most activism today comes in very small doses.)

In other words, campaigns like this one might qualify as a form of "activism" (though I like to refer to it as "volunteerism"), help serve a major role in communities that suffer from decades of dictatorship like that of Syria. The Free Tariq Coalition can advocate and promote national ownership, and harnessing citizen participation within the process of the country's development that has been exclusively up to the Syrian authorities and to Syrian opposition(s). Campaigning, volunteering, or being active is not only about raising awareness about Tariq's case or about freedom of speech, but also about the necessity for all Syrian people and youth to contribute and to participate instead of comforting to the paralyzed community state the Syrian regime managed to build for decades by force.

Syrian Bloggers Under Threat

Tariq Biasi is not the only and the first Syrian blogger who is currently in prison, long before I have started this blog about a year ago, a Syrian blogger named Tariq Gorani was detained on 19-2-2006 for a year and four months before being charged with a seven years sentence verdict on 17-6-2007 for "endangering Syria's security". His blog's name was Aldomari. "Aldomari" is originally taken from the first and the last independent Syrian newspaper that addressed and investigated the corruption of the Syrian authorities for a few months before it was shut down by the regime. (Aldomari was a revolutionary newspaper and though its price was five times the official newspapers', its editions were always sold out.)

I could not read any post by the blogger Aldomari for the Syrian authorities have hacked his blog and deleted all his posts' archive, all I know is that he blogs in Arabic and his posts were seethingly sarcastic. Aldomari blog was the first Syrian blog to be blocked by the Syrian authorities as reported by the Damascene blog.

Tariq Gorani (1985) was not detained only for his blogging activity, he was mainly detained and imprisoned along with his seven friends for establishing a "Democratic Syrian Youth Activity." Because of their online organized activism, they faced harsh and serious verdicts with seven and five years sentences.

A campaign has been launched to support the young men can be found here.

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So basically whoever initiates to express and voice his/her opinions in an organized manner, they are detained and imprisoned for years. Which explains the decreasing amount of Syrian insiders who care about Syrian public affairs.

Tariq Biasi is detained for an online comment criticizing the government, but Tariq Gorani was detained and faced serious charges and is spending seven years in prison not for expressing his views as much as for expressing them within an establishment and an organized body. Hence Syrian insiders prefer to work independently, mostly anonymously and not in groups.

Another example of harassment by the authority towards Syrian bloggers is when the Syrian intelligence kidnapped Syrian bloggeress Rukana Hammour. She is very vocal about the authorities and judicial system's corruption in Syria, and was thus threatened by the intelligence forces to withdraw her nomination to the Syrian parliament.

How You Can Help:

1. Write about Tariq or freedom of online speech on your site or blog.
2. Link to our campaign.
3. Email your friends about us and ask them to sign the petition.
4. Contact NGOs and media agencies in your circles.
5. Email us campaign-related feedbacks and suggestions.

Very Important Rockets

I don’t appreciate it when Arab bloggers and media agencies report and cover the Gaza blockade merely through the death of children and women – not sure why Palestinian men's lives don’t count. It is as if the problem is not in death itself but in the death of children. So the counter argument by Israelis would be by starting to count Palestinian children who have died due the siege and support their arguments with the lack of resources:

"More Muslim mendacity. If children were indeed starving, why are there no photos of their swollen bellies?"

According to this logic, one can argue that since there are no photos of the Holocaust gas chambers in which the Jews were collectively massacred by the Nazis, then I guess the gas chambers did not exist.

To get back to my point, the argument to oppose the Israel’s apartheid policies against the Gazans and Palestinians, in general, should not be through counting/demonstrating dead children and women or even merely focusing on the inhumane conditions that the Palestinians are going through. The argument should in fact address the apartheid racist logic that produced such inhumane practices. My problem is not by bringing up the victims in the Gaza blockade coverage but rather making it the argument to oppose Israel as a counter argument. Death and shortage of food, medicine and fuel are only the visible practices of an Israeli apartheid state. They are not the problem of this state and hence they shouldn’t be our rhetoric and our defense against Israel.

It seems that we have the right to "speak", so loudly, against Israel when we have a picture of a child dying that without this child, we wouldn’t have a case against Israel's inhumane blockade of Gaza.

The Arab rhetoric should renew its arguments, which are again, bombastic and not strategically analytical in reading their own realities in relation to the enemy or in reading the enemy's strategy that constantly presents itself as a "prior" party in the "Palestinian-Israeli struggle." The thing that would damage the core of the Palestinian cause when readers support us merely as sympathizers with the dead children and not as supporters to Palestinians' right to live secure and equal to Israeli citizens.

Having said this, I have something to say about Israel’s right to 'self-defense' against Qassam rockets.

Before assuming there is an opponent struggle taking place between the Israelis and Palestinians, one should agree then that the two parties, equally, have the basic right to live peacefully and securely, and accordingly have the right to self-defense. But when Israel, supported by the UN, US and Europe, keeps prioritizing Israeli citizens at the expense of Palestinian citizens, one should not adhere to the term "Israel-Palestine struggle" since it suggests an adversary. In "Israel-Palestine struggle" there is one party - Israel - which has the right to exist, and hence the right of self-defense. And for that right, it has the right to control the other party's right to live peacefully: it decides on behalf of the Gazans how they should live: "not easily", and block their access to fuel, food and medicine and arbitrary night-raid their homes and bulldoze them on their heads.

This Israeli right to live and right of self-defense is embedded in every single report, with or against Israel’s complete closure of Gaza Strip:

“We all understand the security problems and the need to respond to that but collective punishment of the people of Gaza is not, we believe, the appropriate way to do that,” said John Holmes.

So while the world wholeheartedly backs the right of Israelis to live securely, the world is merely sympathizing with the Gazans lack of fuel, food and medicine. i.e. lack of life.

With Israel, the rhetoric is about its safety and its right to exist and for that, it has the right to defend this very existence and life. With the Palestinians, the rhetoric comes as the right to eat, have hospitals and be warm in winter. Palestinians don’t have the right to have a life, or to exist, and certainly not the right to defend themselves. Palestinians are not equal to Israelis – they are inferior. They have the right to be fed only. While Israelis are always remembered, the Gazans are only remembered when they are dead.

Again, the world prioritizes Israelis, even when they support the Gazans now.

And the Arabs celebrate this utterly biased stance with the right of Israelis to be secure when their mere opposition to the siege is dealt with on a humanitarian basis while they should be arguing for the right of Palestinians to live equally – just like the Israelis, securely and peacefully not just in regards to their basic needs to survive.

Furthermore, all the reports seem to be convinced that Israel’s siege on Gaza is a "reaction" to Qassam rockets when they recognize Israel's right to "self-defense but demand its attention to Gazans’ humanitarian rights. I find this rhetoric as apologetic to Israel’s terrorist policies against the Palestinians. Linking between Qassam rockets and Israel’s two-year siege on Gaza is dealt with on one level, as if the damages on both sides are similar. Let's take a look at Gaza's damages because of the siege:

68 Patients killed by Israeli Occupation due to Closure!

1562 patients in need of treatment outside Gaza Strip

322 patients are in serious danger and in need of urgent treatment

22 money holistic are suspended from work due to the siege

107 class of basic medicines are depleted from Gaza Strip

97 sorts of medicines on the verge of depletion

136 medical instrument are stopped or our of order

6 months, Gaza with closed crossings and borders

160 thousand workers are out of work

3000 fishermen become out of work due to siege

$370 millions are the costs of stalled construction projects

$14 million are the wastage of strawberry and flowers season

4500 strawberry farmers become out of work

470 cancer patients are likely to die

And on the Israeli side:

Homemade rockets have killed in a most updated report 12 Israelis, including three children, according to Israeli Defence Forces.

Yoram Schweitzer of Tel Aviv's Jaffee Centre for Strategic Studies comments:

"Qassams are very primitive missiles and their main effect on Israelis in the area is psychological torment - a kind of Chinese water torture."

So I wonder how can psychological insecurities be considered parallel to the blows mentioned above which the Palestinians have suffered, and how can two years of blockades be considered a "reaction" to such primitive rockets? Hence, the link that is meant to be apologetic to war crimes committed on civilians to maintain the security and not the lives of Israelis, only takes into consideration their psychological situation.

I find the argument in Betselem report on the closure of the Gaza Strip able to stand on its own in unfolding the truth behind the Israeli siege on Gaza:

"Israeli authorities often exploit security threats in order to advance prohibited political interests under the guise of security."

Indeed, Sderot is inhabited by"Mizrachi" Jews and not by Azhkenazis, and some of the inhabitants feel insecure not only from the Qassam rockets but from the racist Israeli government:

"The worst part of all this isn't the rocket fire - it's the fact that the government just doesn't care," says a Sderot settler.

While I reject the article altogether, I think it sheds light on something that can be useful to unfolding the Israeli government's lies in claiming its "need to protect" its settlers; they're not killing civilians for Sderot settlers but against Gazans' political reality - Hamas. So the siege is strictly practiced for political reasons and not for security reasons.

Why is Israel targeting Hamas now? This is where my amateur reading ends.