#Syrian blogger burned to death

21/09/12

A citizen journalist who used the nom de plume Abu Hassan to report from the Syrian city of Hama was burned to death after regime forces targeted his home.

According to a fellow media activist, Syrian army soldiers set Hassan’s house alight after an assault on the area that left 16 people dead.

The activist said that the army were aware that the house belonged to Hassan, a 27-year-old whose real name was Abdel Karim al-Oqda.

He said: “They knew very well who he was. The whole of Hama knew how much of the revolution he had filmed. Abu Hassan was one of the bravest people I have ever met. He sacrificed his life to show the world what is happening in Syria.”

In one of his videos, Hassan is seen explaining why he left his job as a construction worker to take up filming. “I want to expose the crimes that the regime is carrying out… I will film until my last breath.”

Hassan’s death was the latest in a string of killings and kidnappings of citizen and professional journalists in Syria since the outbreak of the revolt in March 2011.

The Paris-based press watchdog, Reporters Without Borders (RSF), said: “Syria’s cities have become a ‘Bermuda Triangle’ for journalists.”

#Syria: Morsi ‘signed death warrant’ for contact group

07/09/12

Syria has accused Egypt’s President Mohamed Morsi of “signing the death warrant” of a contact group trying to solve the nearly 18-month conflict by calling for regime change, official media reported on Friday.

“Syria looks positively on any initiative seeking to contain the crisis and permit a return to normal life,” Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Muqdad said in an interview on state television.

But Morsi’s “latest comments signed the death warrant” of an Egyptian proposal for a regional contact group on Syria that would include Damascus’s key ally Iran, as well as pro-rebel Saudi Arabia and Turkey, he said.

At a meeting in Cairo on Wednesday of Arab League ministers, Morsi said it was time for the Syrian regime to step down.

“The Syrian people have made their voice clear,” he said, and, in a message to President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, insisted: “You will not be around for long.”

At a meeting in the Iranian capital late last month of the Non-Aligned Movement, Morsi also slammed the Damascus government as “oppressive” and urged support for the rebels fighting to oust the Assad regime.

Syrian government daily Tishrin on Friday took Morsi to task in an editorial.

“Morsi’s partiality when it comes to terrorism, murder and destruction has condemned all efforts and initiatives in which Egypt might be involved,” it said.

Damascus refers to rebels in the country as “terrorists.” The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights puts the death toll at more than 26,000 since protests first erupted in the country nearly 18 months ago.

-AFP

25/08/12

18+ #Syria - Assad Commits Mass

Murder of Idlib Villagers Dictator

MIGS Bomb Qmenas Civilians

TERRIFYING video. As if out of a HORROR film. Aftermath of night bombing on civilians of #Sarmeen in #Idlib

10/08/2012 Idlib, #Syria *GRAPHIC*: Martyr Mohammad AbdelHameed Ali was murdered by shooting from the regime’s army.

(08-08-12) Deir Ezzor, #Syria: Martyr Atallah Adnan Al-Ridawi was murdered by a regime sniper

06/08/12

GRAPHIC WARNING…THE WAY SYRIAN CIVILIANS ARE TREATED AFTER THEY ARE MURDERED BY THE REGIME..IT SHEER HORROR!

#Syria, Rid the people of Salah al-Din neighborhood of garbage incineration

ENGLISH SUBS: GRAPHIC A child

was killed, along w/ his seven mo.

pregnant mother, die from shelling!

(07/07/2012) *GRAPHIC WARNING* Andan, Aleppo, #Syria: Isma’eel Al-Janoudi was murdered by Assad Militias

Homs, #Syria: Martyr Baria Al-Haddad murdered by sniper fire as she attempted to flee

Syria’s non-violent activists were the first to be targeted #Syria

12/03/12

Lately, there has been a debate among Syrians about when the revolution began. Did it start with the “Days of Rage” Facebook page? Or the February 17 protest in Al Hariqa neighbourhood of Damascus? The March 15 protest in the capital for the release of political prisoners? The imprisonment and torture of teenagers in Deraa? All of these events were factors that sparked an uprising that is now one year old. But some seeds of dissent were sown years before.

In 2003, in the Damascus suburb of Daraya, Yehya Shurbaji and a group of university friends who called themselves “The Youth of Daraya” initiated a campaign to fight corruption. They walked into shops and gave out posters illustrating three cases of everyday corrupt acts: paying bribes, running red lights and not waiting in line. They spoke gently to people, explaining how each of us - as Syrian citizens - was responsible for seemingly innocent or even culturally tolerated actions that corrupt society.

The Youth of Daraya believed in social activism, and were inspired by historic examples of non-violent movements. They started a mobile library and distributed books to the community. They cleaned the streets. They screened films about Gandhi in the mosque. People in Daraya at first resisted the young men, but slowly began to embrace their optimistic message. And Daraya began to change.

In 2003, the activists were arrested for organising a protest after the fall of Baghdad. “They were accused of forming a non-registered political group and spreading sectarianism, the usual list of accusations which the regime uses against activists,” Yehya’s cousin Eiad Shurbaji recalls. “They were sentenced from two to five years in prison. Yehya spent a long time in solitary confinement. After three years, they demanded he ask for a pardon and mercy for a reduced sentence in front of a judge. He told them: ‘I didn’t do anything wrong and I don’t want to ask for a pardon or mercy.’ So he was imprisoned for an additional two years.”

In 2011, Yehya and his friends joined the revolution following their non-violent principles. He spoke at the Daraya Cultural Centre, asking the community to understand that those we call “shabbiha” - the regime’s “thugs” - are our sons and brothers. He and his best friend, Ghiyath Matar, became known for their uncommon practice of handing out flowers and bottles of water to armed security forces. People asked Yehya: “How is it possible that you would give a rose to these monsters?” He replied, “I’m giving it to myself.”

Yehya and Ghiyath were arrested on September 9. Ghiyath suffered extreme torture and died four days later. He was 24 years old. He died for believing in his message of peace - for giving flowers to the enemy and offering water to the thirsty.

Yehya and his friends’ peaceful war on corruption in 2003 was as brave as the battle of Baba Amr. They were fighting the entrenched regime at its roots, pulling out the weeds of corruption that had become embedded within us.

The Syrian poet and former political prisoner Faraj Bayraqdar explains how the political vacuum and culture of fear that the regime had perfected set the stage for a weak opposition that reflects the regime’s image, complete with strains of egotism, corruption, sectarianism and divisiveness. According to Bayraqdar, an opposition is no more than a microcosm of society and the very government it opposes. His analysis may be hard to accept, but signs of its truth have tainted the revolution.

Today, after months of clashes between shabbiha and mundaseen (“infiltrators”), one word has emerged to unite us: takhween, the act of marking someone who opposes you as a traitor.

It’s not him, it’s not them, it’s us. One year into the revolution, and there is more than enough blame to go around: the exiled opposition’s embarrassingly public bickering and endless internal conflicts; the disorganised Free Syrian Army; fights for and against intervention; splits between communities inside and outside Syria; fractures within society, and not just along sectarian lines. Instead of engaging in difficult, nuanced discussions and embracing differing opinions, we reach for the easiest reactionary responses: name-calling and questioning loyalties. We play our treacherous games, while the Assad regime kills.

Some people say we can’t expect the revolution to adhere to its original principles after the indiscriminate violence and the spilt blood. Not only should we expect it, we should demand it - not in spite of the regime’s violence, but because of it.

People of Daraya - influenced by the youths’ message of peace - began to buy flowers for soldiers. They feared for Daraya’s son, Yehya. On the day he was arrested, security forces paraded him around the streets in an open Jeep, like hunters showing off a fresh kill. Even captured in the car, Yehya was smiling.

“His adherence to non-violence was not a tactical way in order to win the revolution,” his cousin Eiad said. “It’s a principle he’s worked on for over 10 years … and paid the price for it.”

As you read these words, Yehya Shurbaji may be enduring torture or may be in solitary confinement, which in a Syrian prison is akin to being buried alive. He may be dead. Would he think we were worthy of his sacrifice? Is the Syrian opposition in its current form of mass betrayal worthy of one drop of innocent blood, one refugee family or one orphaned child?

The targeted murder and detention of people such as Yehya and Ghiyath, and many others, prove the regime’s calculated strategy to exterminate those who don’t mirror its image, those who are above takhween and those who refuse to let go of the core principles of the revolution: non-violence, non-sectarianism and, above all, self-examination.

Our culture of takhween is killing the revolution. If we have learnt anything from the regime over the last 40 years, we should know what is wrong will never be right; a lie cannot be fabricated into fact; an unjust crime cannot be repackaged as a just act. No number of martyrs, not 10,000, not even a million, changes those principles. To betray them is to betray the ones who sacrificed their lives for Syria. To betray them is to admit we are nothing but traitors to ourselves.

Amal Hanano is the pseudonym of a Syrian-American writer who has published a series of articles on the Syrian revolution in Jadaliyya

Assad’s Useful Idiots #Syria #SOSHomsNow

Syria is another instance of Western sympathy for despotic regimes.

Nancy Pelosi and Bashar Al-Assad meet in Syria in 2007.

By Mona Charen

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued a firm statement to the Syrian elite this week, urging them to overthrow the regime of Bashar Al-Assad. “The longer you support the regime’s campaign of violence against your brothers and sisters, the more it will stain your honor,” she advised.

Only now? Only after thousands of men, women, and children have been murdered, tens of thousands wounded, and countless homes destroyed by artillery shells has the Obama team finally shed its illusions about the Syrian regime?

A mere eleven months ago, when peaceful demonstrators in the streets of Dara and other cities were met with bullets, Secretary Clinton referred to Assad as a “reformer.” She was not alone. Last year, Germany’s foreign minister Guido Westerwelle visited Assad and declared him indispensable for a “constructive solution” to the Middle East’s problems. A leading German think tank, which advises the foreign ministry, called Assad a “modernizer.”

Rare is the sceptered thug who does not attract fawning admiration from some in the free and democratic West. Fidel Castro was the darling of the smart set in the 1960s, and Che Guevara, one of his “wet work” assistants, adorns t-shirts worldwide to this day. Sean Penn is a shill for Hugo Chavez, and Robert Scheer had admiring things to say about Kim Il-Sung.

The more repressive and vicious the regime, the more some in the West will strain to find benign intentions in their leaders. One after another of the old Soviet general-secretaries was hailed, when he first ascended the greasy pole of Kremlin politics, as a “moderate.” Yuri Andropov, we were assured, loved American jazz, good Scotch, and “cynical political jokes with an anti-regime cast.” He went out of his way to meet with dissidents, we were advised. Perhaps he was drunk on Chivas Regal when he shot down civilian airliner KAL 007.

Similarly, when Syrian dictator Hafez Al-Assad (the butcher of Hama) died and was replaced by his son Bashar, the New York Times offered a highly sympathetic portrait of the “shy, young doctor.” The Times noted that expectations of the younger Assad were high, because, in the words of a member of the Syrian parliament, “he’s young and open and wants to give more liberty and democracy.”

Well, it may be churlish to begrudge people their optimism. But Assad has wielded absolute power in Syria for twelve years, and not a single reform has materialized. Quite the contrary. Even before the current bloodbath began, Syria was responsible for arming and protecting Hezbollah, assassinating Lebanese premier Rafik Al-Harriri, cooperating closely with Iran and North Korea, and sending terrorists into Iraq to kill Americans.

None of that prevented Hollywood’s glamour couple, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, from visiting with the Assads to discuss their “refugee work.” Just-released photos captured rock star and “human rights” campaigner Sting and his wife enjoying a good laugh with the Assads in 2008. Vogue magazine, apparently immune to shame, ran a fawning profile of the dictator’s wife, “a rose in the desert.” “Asma al-Assad,” Vogue told its readers, “is glamorous, young, and very chic — the freshest and most magnetic of first ladies.” Along with fetching views of Asma, Vogue featured shots of Bashar playing on the floor with his children.

When images of bleeding and dead children — shot by Assad’s troops — began to cascade out of Syria, Vogue quietly removed the piece from its website.

Then-speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi visited Assad in 2007 (against the wishes of the Bush administration) and came away satisfied with his cooperation. “We were very pleased with the assurances we received from the president that he was ready to resume the peace process.” In this, she was echoing a sentiment often expressed by former secretary of state James A. Baker, co-chairman of the Iraq Study Group, who argued that the key to peace in the Middle East was to “flip Syria.”

But no visitor was more enthusiastic about Bashar Assad than President Obama’s informal envoy, Senator John Kerry, who made six visits to Damascus between 2009 and 2011. In 2010, he said “Syria is an essential player in bringing peace and stability to the region.” Even after the tanks rolled into cities and began blasting away civilian demonstrators, Kerry stuck to his self-delusion: “My judgment is that Syria will move; Syria will change, as it embraces a legitimate relationship with the United States and the West and economic opportunity that comes with it. . . . ”

The “shy doctor” became a cold killer. Those who, without a particle of evidence, persuaded themselves that he was ever anything else, were useful idiots.

— Mona Charen is a nationally syndicated columnist.

Sarkozy brands deaths of reporters in #Syria ‘murder’

PARIS: French President Nicolas Sarkozy declared on Thursday that the deaths of a French photographer and a US reporter in the besieged Syrian city of Homs amounted to “murder”.

American journalist Marie Colvin of Britain’s The Sunday Times and freelance French photojournalist Remi Ochlik were killed Wednesday during what witnesses said was a bombardment of a rebel enclave by Syrian forces.

Angelina Jolie: it’s time for ‘intervention’ in #Syria

Angelina Jolie attends “In the Land Of Blood And Honey” Pairs premiere on February 16, 2012 in Paris, France. Jolie says it’s time for the world to intervene in Syria.
Photograph by: Francois Durand , Getty Images

SARAJEVO - Hollywood star Angelina Jolie said Saturday the world should intervene to stop the violent crackdown in Syria and condemned powers that have vetoed a UN resolution against the regime.

“I think Syria has got to a point, sadly, where certainly some form of intervention is absolutely necessary,” Jolie told Al Jazeera Balkans in an interview shown on the channel’s Internet site.

“It’s so sad, it’s so upsetting, it’s so horrible what’s happening,” Jolie said. “At this time we just must stop the civilians being slaughtered.

“When you see that kind of mass violence and murder on the street, you must do something,” added Jolie, who has served for years as a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

Jolie recently made her directorial debut with “In the Land of Blood and Honey,” a wartime love story in Bosnia, a film she has called a “wake-up call” to prevent atrocities like those now happening in Syria.

Without naming China and Russia, she condemned “these countries that are choosing not to intervene” in Syria despite “global efforts.”

“I feel very strongly that the use of a veto when you have financial interest in the country should be questioned, and the use of a veto against humanitarian intervention should be questioned,” Jolie said.

Moscow and Beijing have twice blocked UN resolutions condemning the ongoing repression in Syria that has left thousands of people dead since March 2011, according to human rights activists.

26/01/12 Warning graphic: The murder of a whole family in Homs … words fail … #Syria

Syrian Actress Becomes Star of Protests Against Regime of Bashar al-Assad #Syria

Jan 11, 2012 4:45 AM EST

Syrian actress Fadwa Soliman has become a star of the protests against the regime of Bashar al-Assad, even though she is from Assad’s own dominant Alawite sect.

She was disowned by her family after speaking at an anti government rally in the opposition stronghold of Homs. Now she has gone into hiding and is on the run from Syrian security forces.

Fadwa Soliman, a Syrian actress and mother of one, has become a poster woman for activists up and down the country following her passionate condemnations of the dictatorial government of President Bashar al-Assad. In doing so she has become one of Assad’s most prominent bêtes noires—a position that she says has made her a marked woman.

“I’m wanted dead or alive,” said the 39-year-old Soliman, speaking from an
undisclosed location in Homs during a recent phone interview with The Daily Beast. “But I refuse to leave this city. Whatever happens to other people will happen to me.”

What has made Soliman’s stance against the government so unusual—and
part of the reason she was publicly disowned by her brother during a broadcast on state TV—is that she is a member of the Shia Alawite sect, the Islamic offshoot that counts Assad as one of its members.

“I want Syrian ambassadors around the world to be kicked out,” said Fadwa Soliman. “I’m wondering if all of them are scared of Bashar al-Assad.”

The Alawites constitute only around 10 percent of Syria’s total population, yet large numbers of the community are recruited to fill the top posts in the military and intelligence services. Most are often assumed to stand squarely behind the president, but Soliman’s vociferous criticism of the regime has pulled the rug from beneath this snug assumption.

“We cannot define Syrians as Alawite or Sunni,” she said. “Syrians accept the other and respect the other, and we cannot define each other as being on our own.”

Soliman was born in the northern city of Aleppo, an ancient merchant city that has yet to be convulsed by the kind of large-scale demonstrations that have engulfed other Syrian towns. She later moved south to the capital, Damascus, to pursue an acting career, appearing in a range of plays and TV shows. Though relatively unknown before the Syrian uprising, the aspiring stage star soon found a different kind of fame after appearing on a platform in Homs and chanting antigovernment slogans in front of a large crowd of protesters.

“What has happened here is shameful to humanity,” she told The Daily Beast. “The Syrian people are appealing to the politicians and the international community and the whole world to stand up and take a position. To stand up and be against tyranny and massacre.”

There have been reports that Homs is currently in the grip of a vicious bout of sectarian killings, with scores of Alawites and Sunni Muslims being kidnapped, tortured, and murdered in recent months, according to the New York–based rights group Avaaz. Soliman said it is the regime that is responsible for stoking cross-community hatred.

“They have used the media to promote the idea there were Sunni gangs shooting Alawites,” she said. “They also made up stories that gangs of Sunnis were shooting soldiers at roadblocks. In fact it was shabiha [the militias loyal to the government], who were trying to make it look like there were sectarian problems. The fact is the Alawites will get screwed either way. If they are in opposition to the regime, the government will kill them and be much harsher on them. But if they follow the regime, then they will end up killing their brothers.” Soliman made plain her contempt for media attempts to portray the Alawite community as a single, homogeneous whole. “The Alawites are human too!” she said, laughing. “Many of them take part in demonstrations and are protected by the Sunni, because people know the government will be harder on them.”

She is also keen to downplay accounts of sectarian violence in Homs, saying it has become a thing of the past. But such talk is belied by other accounts of the situation in the city. There were further reports of protesters being wounded after gunmen opened fire on civilians yesterday—this despite the presence of Arab League monitors who are visiting Syria to ensure that the regime makes good on a promise to halt its bloody crackdown, which the United Nations says has killed more than 5,000 civilians since last March. According to a retired Alawite army officer from Homs, certain areas of the city remain no-go zones for civilians who fear being singled out as a member of the “wrong” sect.

“I know a military pilot who was killed in front of his home,” said the man, who asked not to be named. “He was my neighbor. Five guys from the neighborhood came and shot him. They were Sunni.”

It is a situation that has made Soliman, the actress turned revolutionary, despair of her country’s future. “Sectarianism is painful,” she said. “It’s a humiliating and inhuman feeling. Before this we lived in harmony and we never had sectarian problems—we had a beautiful life together.”

Yet she remains hopeful that Syria can still be yanked back from the brink. “I want the international community to look again at the way it is handling things. I want Syrian ambassadors around the world to be kicked out. I’m wondering if all of them are scared of Bashar al-Assad. Can’t they do anything about him?”