Syrians Against Censored Syria

Facebook is blocked in Syria, would I sound naïve if I said I didn’t see it coming? Why should I? How are the Syrians facebooking? Launching opposition campaigns? What's Facebook in Syria anyway? Active civil society? Syrian groups calling to overthrow the Syria regime? What's so dangerous about Syrian facebookers that they shouldn't be using it anymore? Or perhaps because the site is American so it should be blocked? Or maybe the Syrian officials have no idea what's Facebook except that it's an American and it's getting popular in Syria? All the above?

My theory? I think the Syrian officials don’t have a thorough idea how Syrians are facebooking, I think they did not block Facebook–the-site, but the unfamiliar reaction to this site, the unknown consequences of this reaction that might be very much, uncontrolled!

Even though I am not a big fan of this website but I along with some users learned how to use it to promote my projects. More than once I tried permanently to deactivate my account, but I always come back and always for a new different reason.

Ok so Ammar Abd El Hamid used to blog on Blogger, but he's not anymore god damn it! Youtube has opposition videos downloaded, opposition sites are opposition "no good" sites, Israel is the "enemy", but what's really the deal with Facebook? And how come Myspace, Hi5, Hi-Syria, and I don’t know what, aren’t blocked in Syria? Why just Facebook?

United Nations estimated the population in Syria year 2003 at 17,800,000. How many of those do we have on Facebook? It says that there are only 28,079 facebookers that affiliated to the "Syria" regional network. Of course there are many Syrian Facebookers who don’t affiliate with the Syrian regional network simply because they don’t live in Syria. So generally speaking those who affiliate to the Syrian network live in Syria at the moment. So out of millions we have only 28,079 Syrian Facebookers.

Compared to Syria, Lebanon which was estimated in 2003 by the United Nations at 3,653,000 has 150,966 facebooker users affiliated to its regional network.

Looks like Facebook isn’t popular in Syria as Hi5 or Hi-Syria , yet it is the first and only social website that was blocked in Syria. Again, why?

Let's take a look at the popular groups in Syria at its second day of the blockage:

أغلظ 100 شخصية في سوريا

الإعلان السوري .....إلى متى هذا الإنحطاط ؟؟؟

لمسة عشق على ارض دمشق

بحبك يا شام

أصابيع رجلين البنات عشقها الشباب _ Fingers feet

Anti-Shawi ~...Die Shawi Die!!!...~

Syrian Single Girls

لا لسجن سلطان الطرب

The Great Facebook Race – Syria

احلى النكت الحمصية

Very…dangerous I'd say! None of these groups are political or even close to demanding political or social change in Syria. So it must be not the majority's interests that concerns the Syrian officials but rather the minority's interests and activism in the site:

FREE ANWAR BUNNI

Freedom for Michel Kilo

Syrian Gays Rights

لا .. لحجب مواقع الانترنت في سوريا

For Civil Marriage in Syria


Facebook's events and groups are not just what's processing the Syrian people's awareness, but also its causes. For the past 40 years the Syrian officials are the only ones who can speak of Golan Heights, I once wanted to write my seminar and I asked for a map of Golan Heights but they told me I cannot for "security reasons". Ayman Haykal, a Syrian citizen and the father of the Syrian bloggers made an attempt to transfer the strictly formal representation of Golan Heights to people when he created the cause Free Golan. It's the people who make causes happen, not officials, and certainly not elected ones. Yaser Arafat died, but he wasn’t the cause, Palestine, Palestinians are, the Palestinian cause will always live as long as there are living Palestinians.

Another cause on Facebook is Saving Old Damascus, that is from Syrian Regime itself.

It is worth to note that a couple days ago Syrian Facebookers have launched a campaign to save a girl from a potential "honour" crime. Dania Sharif wrote the petition and addressed it to Syrian authorities to act and stop honour crimes in Syria. Not sure if this was the reason or not, but it could be.

These groups are not popular, not because their cases are not supported but their unpopularity stems from fear. Nevertheless, these political and unorthodox groups are not the reason of the blockage of the site, I think.

Who lives in Syria knows that it's the country of "nothing's going on" except to hang out in old Damascus' cafes, but recently there has been a cultural awakening; people are starting to organize their interests in concerts, galleries, conferences, plays, screenings…etc. and Facebook is facilitating the process which is very hard to do in an inactive militarily controlled society. There are no cultural institutions in Syria, no private independent NGOs, no civic institutions, who represent the populations except the government? Syrian Facebookers are trying now to represent themselves. Those who cannot be activists in a "real" Syria can be one in a virtual Syria. Facebook is becoming a tool to bring together these very individuals to promote their socially, religiously and politically prohibited thoughts. We are not talking about blocking of a social networking tool, we are talking about blocking an awareness networking tool, a chance to express, to finally speak and do something about it.

It's high time to demand our right to seek ALL and ANY information regardless of its source, we have the mind to decide for ourselves what we should/should not read or believe.

We have the right to organize ourselves and activate our numb citizenship. We want to be socially and politically active. We want to campaign for human rights, we want to be civilians instead of abstract "Syrians," instead of mere Muslims and Christians.

We want to engage in building our nation.

We don’t want to be permitted to act; we want to be voluntarily and spontaneously acting.

We want to be doers and actors.

We want Syria uncensored!

Sabbah: Desperate to Censorship Facebook!

Taken From Sabbah

“You know you are doing well when Zionists and their alike are desperately trying to silence you.”

This is exactly what is happening to me on Facebook for two consecutive days now.

As you know, beside Sabbah’s Blog, I also run the aggregator, Palestine Blogs - The Gazette.

Yesterday I received an email from Facebook Team complaining about Palestine Blogs application which I created there few days ago. Following is a copy of Facebook email to me, which is self explanatory:

From: Facebook [developers -help+mmymw2yr@facebookmail.com]
Date: Nov 13, 2007 12:19 PM
Subject: User TOS report against Palestine Blogs - The Gazette
To: haitham.sabbah@gmail.com

Hi,

A Facebook user reported that your application Palestine Blogs - The Gazette violates our Terms of Use. The user reporting it selected Attacks individual or group as the violation. This person also said:

“blatantly Anti-Semitic. Attacks Jews and Israelis as Nazis, war criminals, legitimate suicide bombing targets, etc.”

Please investigate this issue.

Thanks,
The Facebook Team

I replied back to Facebook Team explaining to them that the above is not true and gave them a brief description of the aggregator - Palestine Blogs, but the email bounced back because the sender email (Facebook’s) is configured to bounce emails sent to it. I looked around Facebook site to find a way to contact the ‘Team‘ but could not find a way to do that, so I gave up… At least I tried!

The story did not end there. Today I got a second email from Facebook again, and it was another complain, but this time regarding my blog application (Sabbah’s). The email below is self explanatory:

From: Facebook [developers -help+mmymw2yr@facebookmail.com]
Date: Nov 14, 2007 7:37 PM
Subject: User TOS report against Sabbah’s
To: haitham.sabbah@gmail.com

Hi,

A Facebook user reported that your application Sabbah’s violates our Terms of Use. The user reporting it selected Attacks individual or group as the violation. This person also said:

“Following my recent encounters with Sabbah on his blog, it is pure propaganda blog that silences everybody who disagree with the writer (I was silenced after posting very polite comments questioning a few posts). It is basically a one-man hosted hate group and i don’t think it has a place on platform such as Facebook. Thank you!”

Please investigate this issue.

Thanks,
The Facebook Team

Pathetic! They did not leave anything for chance and grouped all the sins in this world together. A “one-man hosted hate group, anti-Semitic, anti-Jews, anti-Israelis as Nazis, citing war criminals and legitimate suicide bombing targets.”

It looks like a systematic-desperate force trying to influence/scare Facebook to censorship what is published there. Of course this is not new around the web (check Steve’s post about the resent attempt to silence Google), and I’m sure it will never stop as long as we have Zionists spitting poison every way they go.

Anyway, if I disappear from Facebook, you know why!

To Syrian authorities: Stop a Potential Crime

Created by Dania Shraif on Nov 13, 2007

Category: Justice

Region: Syria

Target: The Syrian government including Mr. president, Prime minister, the minister of justice.

Web site: Syrian Women

Description:

(R. M) Qab, 19, is too close to being killed by her brother, as he has publicly pledged to do in the name of “honor.” (R. M) is one of the two women whose stories we ran previously.

There’s been some developments in these cases over the past week. One of the young women finally married the man she loved and wanted to be with, and she was released from custody to go with him to an undisclosed location.

But the second woman is still detained, and now that her family has dropped the (fraudulent) theft charges they had brought against her, she is due to be released by law.

The problem is that even though her brother has publicly announced he will kill her to “reclaim the family’s honor,” the court plans to release her directly to her family. In other words, release her directly to the slaughter!

The acting judge, is in a difficult dilemma. On the one hand there’s the family with all its laden traditions alongside people in the local community pressuring him to release (R. M) to the family for them to carry out the slaughter that the brother is promising (the father does not condone it.) And on the other hand his own morality and sense of ethics as a judge disallow him to put in danger the life of a citizen. He knows very well that any guarantees her family give for her safety will be nothing beyond ink on paper. He knows well that she will be slaughtered. He has been indecisive on the matter.

Petition:
This petition will be sent to the Syrian government including Mr. president, Prime Minster, the minister of justice and all parts of the releasing decision to try to push them to take their responsibility in order to protect her life by sending her to a safe unknown place where she will be able to consume building her future and upcoming life instead of sending her to her slaughter family where she will be killed immediately.

We also call upon all individuals and organizations who work with human rights and the rights of women and a better future for humanity to get involved to protect (R. M).

Silence in this case is nothing less than condoning the slaughter of (R. M).

Sign the petition

The To Syrian authorities: Stop a Potential Crime petition to The Syrian government including Mr. president, Prime minister, the minister of justice was written by Dania Shraif and is hosted free of charge at GoPetition.

Text Message

Just like in the movies, I woke up today expecting too much from people, expecting lots of kisses from mom and dad, but mama and baba didn't give a damn. They went to work as soon as they were done with their coffee. So I retreated to my laptop seeking love from my virtual friends whom gave me lots of it.

I dressed up, and went to see another Iranian film which happens to be deadly boring for it was Okayed by the Iranian government. Inside the cold hall, and while I was hoping for something to strike me in the movie, I received a text message from dad:

Hi razan be early tonight will celebrate ur birthday out happy birthday

I smiled, though it meant that there will be no hangover tomorrow morning, but I am glad my parents did give a damn after all, they usually celebrate indoors.

I was looking at my pictures when I was young, apparently I did not like cameras.

in the US

Latakya

in Damascus celebrating my 23 birhday, a hell of shyness.

but not always

KSA

damn it, i'm 27.

Blogger is Blocked in Syria

One of the dear Syrian bloggers is currently visiting Syria, he is sharing his response of his visit by posting via his cell phone on his blog. Even though I don’t' share his reading on many issues like his reading of the economic changes or his reading of Syrian racism towards the Iraqi refugees as motivated by "ignorance", that's totally an interesting read, but he reported a piece of information that has been causing me pain ever since I got back to Syria and it troubles me to ignore the problem altogether when reporting Blogger is unblocked! Sorry dear Sasa, Blogger is very blocked.

Ayman, Amre, Abu Fares, Yaser, Sami and I have blogged about the blocking of Blogger in Syria, or else we would have been imagining ourselves going through these proxies in order to access our blogs and Syria Planet blogs for couple months for myself and years for the rest.

There are many servers in Syria, the official server, the governmental, which blocks not only Blogger, but also Youtube, Google Translator, Unblocker, Spam the Blog, Israeli sites and opposition sites.

I am not sure what server Sasa is using, he could be using one of the private servers whose policy isn't similar to that of the government's. Private servers no longer available for public because the lines were already limited and all sold out.

So who is "Syria" in "Blogger Blocked in Syria"? Is it the official server or the private server? The governor or the merchant? The one who can jail you if caught accessing opposition sites, or the one who doesn’t give damn whether it is a pornographic or an opposition site?

When we say that blogger is blocked in Syria we mean the Syrian officials consciously blocks sites that are critical of the Syrian government's internal policies. We mean that seeking and republishing the information is blocked in Syria. We mean that people get arrested if they play the "go around" game when accessing these sites and publish certain comments.

A friendly note to our dear blogger Sasa since this is the second time he wrongly reports on the unblocking of Blogspot in Syria, we wish Blogger was unblocked, but the truth is, it's not even close.

If anything is unblocked in Syria, it's the bloggers' will to blog.

Syria: End Repression of Human Rights Activists!

I have known Mustafa for sometime now, it was a strange meeting, yet our interests in human rights, woman rights and minorities' rights made us good friends. Mustafa is the kind whom you listen to when he speaks, though he has some firm facial features, but that cannot hide the humane, the kind and the shy man behind, especially when he smiles.
I remember the first time we met, he, his lovely girlfriend and friends, sang for hours in a Damascene night at the roof of their house. We sang Ziad and Sami' Shqir's songs, we sang for the dream of liberty, for the dream to be allowed to act, to be Syrians.
Though Mustafa is young, he is one of the striking Syrians I've met in my life. He is always busy attending conferences, researching for human rights, and writing reports on human rights magazines. He's the citizen.
For a citizen, for the citizens that are forgotten in their lonely and dark cells, for Damascus Spring's prisoners of conscience, for every Syrian who chose to live the hard way, I raise my voice and ask Syria, Syrians and you, to support these citizens' right to breath: End Repression of human rights activists!

I publish below Mustafa's own words of his case---please republish.

Dear Sir \ Madam,

Although the Syrian constitution protects the rights to freedom of movement, association and expression, the government has used emergency powers and restrictive legislation to stifle the activists’ exercise of their most basic rights. Government authorities also rely on the continuing state of emergency to adopt arbitrary measures to silence their critics and to prohibit them from operating as a legally recognized group. The government has relied on these laws to override constitutional guarantees and to establish itself as the sole arbiter of with whom and how Syrians can express, associate, and travel. Syrian authorities routinely use travel bans as punishment for activists and dissidents. The use of such bans expanded dramatically in 2006 and 2007 to include a lot of youth.

I was traveling from Damascus to Amman, Jordan, on July 30, 2007, to attend the course: Leadership towards the Elimination of All Forms of Violence against Women organized by the United Nations University and the International Leadership Institute. Syrian security forces at the border prevented me from leaving the country. They did not explain the reason for the travel ban but indicated that the Political Security Agency (Aleppo branch) had issued the order and that I had to report to them. Such restrictions constitute a violation of my right to freedom of movement and an undue interference with my rights to freedom of expression and association. For a few months before, Security services exercised pressures on me and my family.

I registered a case in front of the Administration court, which looks in government-related cases. I do not expect a positive result because of the continuing state of emergency.

Under international law, everyone is free to leave his or her country. The International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights bars states from restricting someone’s right to leave the country, except when the given restrictions are prescribed by law and are “necessary to protect national security, public order, public health or morals or the rights and freedoms of others,” and are consistent with the other rights recognized in that treaty. Syrian security agents have issued travel bans in Syria without any explanation and without any judicial basis.

Syria has obligations under several international treaties to uphold these rights, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Social, Economic and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). Syria ratified the ICCPR on March 23, 1976, and the ICESCR on January 3, 1976.

The UN secretary-general’s special representative on human rights defenders, Hina Jilani, expressed concern in her March 2006 report about the lack of freedom of assembly and freedom of movement for defenders in Syria, in particular with respect to their participation in seminars and workshops abroad on human rights issues. (see http://www.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/4session/docs/A-HRC-4-37.doc)

(To know more about the End Repression of Human Rights Groups in Syria, read HRW report on this link: http://hrw.org/reports/2007/syria1007/ )

I have "No Room to Breath", so I need your support by taking an action.


Best regards,

Mustafa Haid

Executive Board Member

Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies

Syria