Category Archives: Human Rights

Fadwa Suleiman’s Speech Represents Me

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I have my reservations on the Syrian National Council, Burhan Ghalioun’s “apology” to the Kurds is shameful, and in a free democratic Syria the battle against nationalism and national Arab identity will continue, it will take a while, a long while, until we reach that separation between “belonging” and “identity.” What the hell is identity and why do we need it in the first place? Some say, that in order to lose “conventional self-identification,” or sectarianism, we need to be “Syrians.” But isn’t by becoming Syrians, we enhance a racist, national identification as being solely “Arabs”? Or else, why do we refer to “Syrian-Kurds” as such? Once we drop hyphenations, we become as one, and in order to be one, we need to lose those national preconceptions of ourselves, as Sunni Muslims or as Arabs.

I don’t know what “Syrians” means, belonging to a geographical border? owning a “similar consciousness”? Don’t get me wrong, I do relate to the people of Syria the most, but that is also relative. I am sure someone supporting Hezbolla relates to a Syrian supporter of Assad, and someone like me, relates to all revolutionaries in the region. So what the hell?

I do not believe in a ‘national consciousness,’ I don’t believe in nationality, look how it is interpreted by those apologetic to Assad crimes, and those who’re fighting for their dignity and freedom, and they’re all “Syrians.”

So please, do not talk to me about being “Syrians.” I want to be something else, like Homsi or Dar’awi for example.

Colonization made us all a bunch of nationalists, and because of that we made Arab Jews our enemies. Fighting for a label than for a value. I want to be living hand in hand with all of you, and this cannot be done if we see ourselves as “majorities” and “minorities.” The foundation of this logic lies in nationalism. Look at Iranian regime’s idea of nationalism, it’s not sectarianism we’re taking about here, it’s precisely nationalism. Nationalism that colors a whole nation in one color, one self-identification based on “majority.” I am not an Arab, I am not a Sunni, but people see me like a Sunni and an Arab nonetheless. I don’t want to be a citizen when other citizens are prevented from getting their rights, I don’t want to be a Syrian when other Syrians cannot be one.

Syrian actress Fadwa Suleiman appeared this week at a demonstration in Homs. The regime is looking for her now, her life is in danger. She begun hunger strike 3 days ago.

I came here to talk about Fadwa Suleiman’s speech she made yesterday, and here I am rambling about postcolonial anxieties. Anyways, this woman is amazing, really, and not because she’s an Alawite, I am not sure if you don’t know this, but if you’re an Alawite, and you’re opposing the Syrian regime, you’re not only considered a “traitor,” but also you will be boycotted from those supporting the regime, and you’re most likely be killed, not because you’re opposing the regime, but precisely because you’re an Alawite and opposing the regime.

This is the first and only speech made by a Syrian woman publicly addressing her people, this is the first time that a Syrian actress addresses her people and starts a hunger strike, do you understand how courageous she is? Do you understand how much she is in danger right now?

She’s fighting for a value, she’s fighting for a whole different Syria, and I want to hear from Burhan Ghalioun is to say the same.

Listen to her speech here and read the English translation on Abu Kareem’s blog here. For a little background on Suleiman, here’s a good piece about her on BBC, I am sure you won’t find it on Angry Arab’s blog or MRZine.org and the likes.

كلنا ليلى في سوريا #KolenaLaila

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فكرة “كلنا ليلى”

انطلقتْ فكرة “كلنا ليلى” عام 2006 بمبادرة مدوِّنة مصرية باسم “لستُ أدري” بالإضافة الى العديد من المدوّنين في العالم العربي. و تتلخص فكرتها في دعوة المدونين العرب إلى التعبير عن آرائهم ومشاهداتهم فيما يتعلق بوضع المرأة العربية بكل حرية وصراحة، خاصة في ظل التأثير المتصاعد للإعلام الجديد على مجتمعاتنا متمثلاً في المدونات. وقد رأينا ذلك الأثر في الأعوام الماضية حيث اهتمت صحف ووسائل إعلامية عدة بالمبادرة منها الجزيرة والبي بي سي وصحيفة المصري اليوم والدستور وغيرهم . هدفنا من هذه الحملة المساهمة في إثراء الحوار حول حياتنا الإجتماعية العربية وما يتخللها من نجاحات أو إخفاقات. ونؤكد أن الفكرة ليست للترويج لثقافة أو قيم بعينها، ولكنها دعوة لنقد ومراجعة سلوكياتنا اليومية برغبة حقيقية في التغيير. ندعوك للمشاركة معنا سواء كنت ممن يعتقدون أن مجتمعاتنا محافظة إلى حدٍّ كبير، وتُعطي الأفضلية للرجل وتقلل من شأن المرأة وحريتها، أو كنت ممن يؤمنون أن مجتمعاتنا منفتحة وأنها أعطت المرأة نصيبها من الحقوق بما يكفي.

“كلنا ليلى” اليوم

فى عامنا هذا تهتم “كلنا ليلى” بالكشف عن قصص التحدي والتغيير والمحاولة عاشتها ليلى. نهتم أن نعرف رحلة نجاح المرأة في بلادنا، مازاد عليها وما غاب وما نطمح أن تكون عليه أحلامها ومساحتها من الواقع.. ومحاولتها لمستقبل أفضل.

كيفية المشاركة:

المشاركة متاحة ومفتوحة للجميع نساءً ورجالاً، وللجميع مطلق الحرية في إبداء الرأي بأي من وسائل التعبير المتاحة: مقال، فكرة، صورة، تصميم، قصة ، أو أي شكل آخر. ويمكنك كذلك أن تختار بين النشر في مدونتك الخاصة أو النشر في المدونة الرئيسية للحملة. ليست هناك أية قيود سواء على الموضوعات أو الأفكار المطروحة، أو اللغة المستخدمة (رغم تفضيلنا للغة العربية لتكون اللغة الرسمية للمبادرة)، كما يمكن للمشاركة أن تكون مكتوبة أو مسموعة أو مرئية. كل ذلك مرحبٌ به ما دام صاحبه مؤمناً به ومسئولاً بشكل شخصي عن الدفاع عن آرائه أمام وجهات النظر المضادة ومستعداً كذلك لتغييرها إن اقتنع بأوجه القصور فيه.

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Helem replies to Massad: We are not agents of the West

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Ghassan Makarem founding member and current Executive Director of Helem replied to Joseph Massad’s interview conducted with him by Reset Doc website. Here’s an extract of the interview:

The real problem with Massad’s interview is the lies, fabrications, and insinuations of being agents of the West against the people in Helem. This is an opinion we have heard many times from Salafists and chauvinists. The contention that homosexuals are agents of the West, that they are “imposing Western values”, and that they belong to the upper classes was also used by Khomeini before rounding up homosexuals and executing them. It is the same justification given to call for the arrest of HIV positive persons in Egypt and elsewhere and to pass a viciously homophobic law in Uganda.

Read the whole article here.

After Two Years Behind Bars Syrian State Security Court Sentences A Syrian Blogger Three Years For "Spreading False News"

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This is simply outrageous and heartbreakening. I cannot imagine what his parents feel right now. He was arrested when he was 29 and now he will be released when he’s 34. and for what? for not giving the Syrian intelligence the names of people who spoke against the Syrian government in the forum he administrates. Yes, that’s Kareem Arbaji, Kareem is being sentenced because he is defending his friends, he is being sentenced as a punishment, because he defied not the “persona” of the government, but the very “system” of intelligentsia in Syria, where people got accustomed, out of fear and due to torture, to turning each other in to the government. Kareem did nothing “wrong” and said nothing “wrong”, but he paid two years for his “non-Syrian” principles, and now he is paying three more. This is unforgivable, they send children to Europe when they get raped, how you like them now grownups? hypocrite.

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Iraq's New Surge: Gay Killings

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Excellent article on the killings of gays in Iraq written by Rasha Moumneh appeared yesterday on Foreign Policy:

Western attention has always focused primarily on sectarian attacks in Iraq. Yet al-Sadr’s militia and its counterparts in countless neighborhoods and towns have long had other targets in their cross hairs. These men claim to bear the banners of religion and morality, defending against any transgressors. They paint themselves as the caretakers of tradition, culture, and national authenticity — which often means keeping women, as well as men, in their rigidly enforced traditional roles. Ironically, they sell their violence as a means of security: Amid the total upheaval of Iraqi society over the last eight years, many people regard any relaxing of gender roles as a threat to public order, undermining patriarchal power. And since the coalition forces failed to provide security after the invasion, such cultural conservatives have moved in to fill the role. Many aimless, unemployed advocates of rigid traditionalism have taken up the task with their guns.

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"Human Rights" and Syrian and American Censorship of websites in Syria

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This post is not well-documented for I don’t have the time to search for links to support my claims, hence I realize my argument is weak nevertheless I don’t think it’s baseless.

A lot has been said and done, both by Syrian netizens and by western human rights organizations, about the vicious no good evil Syrian regime censorship of websites in Syria. It’s the favorite topic for almost all of the human rights websites and organizations, alternative and mainstream ones, to pin point the illegal censorship policies of certain regimes mostly Syria and Iran.

Whenever a website is found blocked in Syria, these organizations hurry and publish their appealing reports to the western world condemning the act that devalues one of the most important human right to the western world, freedom of speech. A right I think it’s also important to us here in this region, but in a whole different context.

Whenever a prominent blogger or a Syrian/Iranian activist is arrested, or rather, whenever the Syrian regime commits the crime of censorship, reports in the western world never stop from flowing.

But what is not known to many people who follow and salute these human rights organization is that many Syrians are arrested and recently prevented from leaving the country for no explained reasons (which is now considered the threat to Syrians activists than imprisonment) and contrary to a stupid report published here calling US and European officials to put pressure on Syria concerning its human rights record. Only the prominent political prisoners get attention from these organizations and from the mainstream and alternative western media. Of course the case is relatively the same with Syrian human rights organizations, not every Syrian political prisoner or detainee get the same attention from local human rights organizations and many prisoners remain unknown.

My point is that the term “human rights” is never about people’s rights really. It’s one of the major political terms used heavily in political contexts to support or condemn certain people or regimes according to the organization’s agenda or its source of funding agenda. If an authorial regime arrests people who resist its authority, authorial human rights organization support authorial political prisoners and ignore “marginal” ones. If Syria censored websites, all western human rights organizations heavily condemn the illegal act, but these very organizations stay still, and thus become cooperatives, when censorship is practiced “legally” by American websites and corporations like Google, which prevents Syrian users from downloading most of its products like Google Talk, Chrome, Gears, Video chat and from uploading a video to Google Videos.

I cannot upgrade and renew my wordpress account from Syria, because wordpress deals with Paypal and Syria and Lebanon are not listed in its countries’ list to allow me to pay. I have to rely on my friends on other parts of the world to do so. And the only reason I reserved a domain on wordpress is because the domain blogspot is blocked in Syria and I fear wordpress domain might be blocked in the future as well.

So what did Amnesty or Human Rights Watch or Reporters Without Borders have to say about these websites who censor, as the Syrian regime, Syrian users from using their services?

Absolutely nothing.

Yes, these three websites have not published not one single report condemning Google or Linkedin or Paypal about their decisions to prevent Syrian users from using their services, but they did however, publish heavily on Syria’s act of censorship. These so called prominent human rights organizations do not condemn the act of censorship itself but rather the doer of that act, and this condemnation always goes hand in hand with the American foreign policy, sorry no, intervention, hmm not really, “imperialistic occupation” in the region, as Azmi Bshara rightly once called it.

From how I see it, human rights organizations are like the United Nations, their job is not to defend people’s rights but rather to show the world who’s in power at the moment. We can see that from Human Rights Watch reports on both of the Zionist war crimes on Lebanon in 2006 and on Gaza 2008-09. HRW reports on July war were clearly biased to Israel because the whole world was siding with it, whereas with Gaza, the story was slightly different; HRW can no longer ignore the heavy amount of documentations and visual proofs circulated widely around the world by the Gazans and activists condemning Israel of committing war crimes in sieged Gaza. HRW is not objective and certainly not condemning Israel as much is depicting a historical moment the world is processing right now against Israel as a war-crimes state.

Western human rights organizations are only tools used by authorial western countries to put political pressure on Syrian and Iranian regimes exactly because of their support to Hezbolla and Hamas, the one thing that pleases me about these regimes.

Syrian regime censor websites and arrest people to secure its domination over the country, some American websites prevent us from using their websites because we support Hamas and Hezbolla. President Assad did not claim not once that Syria is a democratic country, but these websites, coming from proud democratic and civilized nation that is, are punishing us Syrians for our democratic choice; supporting resistance. So please, don’t ever talk to me about democracy, human rights and freedom of speech before, and as a starter, put Bush and his soldiers on trial and fucking kill him in front of his people (who elected him) on Christmas as you killed Saddam in front of his people (who did not elect him) on Eid.

Helem Wins 2009 IGLHRC's Felipa de Souza Award

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From IGLHRC website:

The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) announced on January 23rd 2009 that it would award its 2009 Felipa de Souza Award to the Lebanese group Helem. IGLHRC’s Felipa Award recognizes the courage and effectiveness of groups or leaders dedicated to improving the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex (LGBTI) and other individuals stigmatized and abused because of their sexuality or HIV status. The first organization in the Arab world to set up a gay and lesbian community center, Helem’s work has consistently broken new ground in a country that criminalizes homosexuality and where violence and abuse are persistent problems.

“We are so pleased to be able to present our 2009 Felipa Award to Helem,” said IGLHRC’s Executive Director Paula Ettelbrick. “Helem works in very challenging circumstances to make a very real difference to the lives of countless LGBTI people in the Middle East and beyond. We applaud their courage and commitment to human rights for all.”

Founded in 2004, Helem (the Arabic acronym of “Lebanese Protection for Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals and Transgender”) is based in Beirut, with support chapters in Australia, France, Canada and the United States. The organization’s work is multifaceted, ranging from advocacy to public education. A major focus of its human rights advocacy work revolves around eradicating Article 534 of the Lebanese Penal Code, which is used to criminalize homosexuality; another advocacy focus addresses HIV/AIDS. Its community center has consistently offered the local LGBTI community a wide range of services ranging from HIV testing and counseling to workshops and publications about how to respond to harassment and arbitrary arrest.

The Felipa Award embodies the spirit of Felipa de Souza, who endured persecution and brutality after proudly declaring her intimacy with a woman during a 16th Century inquisition trial in Brazil.

The Felipa Award will be presented to Helem as part of IGLHRC’s A Celebration of Courage gala event on March 30, 2008 in New York and on April 2, 2008 in San Francisco. For more information regarding IGLHRC’s Felipa de Souza Award and its A Celebration of Courage events, visit: www.iglhrc.org.

Read the whole thing here.

To Lebanese Only: Abolish Article 534 of the Lebanese Penal Code

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The Gay-Straight Alliance in Lebanon is asking all Lebanese inside and in the diaspora to sign a petition that calls for an abolishment of the article 534 of the Lebanese penal code which criminalizes and illegalizes so called “sexual acts against nature”. If you’re Lebanese please help circulating this petition within your circles:

The Lebanese elections are coming up! Will the politicians listen to the real voices of their people? Article 534 of the Lebanese Penal Code criminalizes “sexual acts against nature” and is used to target homosexuals and promote a general public hatred towards LGBTs in Lebanon. It is high time we strongly demand that the government remove this article and ensure equality for all its population without discrimination.We are asking Lebanese people only (in Lebanon and abroad) to sign this petition so that we reach 10,000 citizens whose voices cannot be ignored in our country any longer. Gay or straight - it doesn’t matter. Our cause is about human dignity and the right to protection. It is time we all stood together and recognized that none of us are free until all of us are free.

Once this petition hits 10,000 people, we will send it to all 128 members of the Lebanese parliament (hopefully right after the elections in June), as well as to the parliamentary human rights committee, the Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Interior, and Ministry of Social Affairs.

Go to the petition to sign it here .

"Curing" Lesbians by Raping Them

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An article published on the Guardian on Thursday 12 March reveals that one of the leading football female players has been raped and stabbed 25 times for being a Lesbian:

The partially clothed body of Eudy Simelane, former star of South Africa’s acclaimed Banyana Banyana national female football squad, was found in a creek in a park in Kwa Thema, on the outskirts of Johannesburg. Simelane had been gang-raped and brutally beaten before being stabbed 25 times in the face, chest and legs. As well as being one of South Africa’s best-known female footballers, Simelane was a voracious equality rights campaigner and one of the first women to live openly as a lesbian in Kwa Thema… Human rights campaigners say it is characterised by what they call “corrective rape” committed by men behind the guise of trying to “cure” lesbians of their sexual orientation.

It is important to see that precisely because she’s open as a Lesbian and activist that she was subjected to this “corrective” criminal reaction in her society. Like in Lebanon, where gays and Lesbians have their NGOs, bars and night clubs mostly in Beirut and some are openly activists for their rights that we heard of two gay couple had been subjected to similar criminal reaction only this time by those who were supposed to protect the law.

Societies will never change if things kept in the secret, if things remain within the “political correct” constructed formula. While it is very difficult to be open as a gay person, it is very important to do so in order for societies to process this radical change in its structure even if by doing so you’ll be under serious attack.

In Syria there has been a sexual abuse by Shahabandar police station where police officers were harassing and mocking a transsexual person, male body with female sexual organs. They took off his clothes and touched him sexually and took pictures and videos of him. This harassment has been documented and videoed via cellphone that was distributed all over Damascus via bluetooth. My father who works in the Shahabandar area told me that the shops’ owners neighboring the police station heard a female voice shouting for help from within the station and hence they all went there to stop what they assumed to be a rape taking place. When the shop owners found out that the female voice was actually coming from a male voice with a female sexual organs they all disappeared and left the person alone facing abuse by the police just because he is neither a woman, nor a man, hence not a human being with equal rights that abusing him wouldn’t be exactly as abusing a woman, or man. Wondering if these incidents will ever take place in the Syrian streets, hmm..

There is something about these so called “protectors of law” and LGTB community. It is not a secret that the Tripoli police officers in Lebanon made arresting gays a hobby for them. No wonder why Anarchists hate the police so much ;-)

Notes on Syrian Bloggers Campaign Against Homosexuality

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I am going to cut the chase and get straight to the points I want to make here, there are many things I want to say in Arabic later on but I am going to say here what I am incapable linguistically to say in Arabic, unfortunately, I am westernized.

The campaign that some Syrian bloggers launched against homosexuality which has technically begun yesterday is the first campaign that has to do with Syrian social matters. To be more specific, this campaign is identity-based. Bloggers feel that because they’re Arabs and Syrian and of course, Muslims, they’re threatened by the existence of homosexuals. Not just because god said so in Quraan, but also because they feel that the reason why homosexuals are getting more vocal about their rights is because of the internet, western interference through tv and movies, and what have you.

I have to say here, that part of what they’re saying is true, but not quite so. But we’ll get into that later on in other post.

What I find so interesting about this campaign is that and as I have said above it is an identity-based campaign. Syrian bloggers campaigned to free a fellow Syrian blogger. Tariq Biasi, they campaigned for occupied Palestine and occupied Gaza, they campaigned for occupied Golan Heights also. Campaigns about freedom of speech and Palestinian and Golan liberty does not reflect the “who I am” formula the campaign against homosexuality heavily carries within it. By saying “I am against homosexuals”, Syrian bloggers are saying this is who we are, we are Muslims, we are Syrians, and we are normal human beings. We want to save our society, we are locals and we wont let strangers to take the only thing we got; our identity.

As much as I “oppose” the simplistic, clichéd, typical argument this campaign offers, this very simplicity is exactly what the Syrian society is constructed of: ready-made thoughts, traditions and habits, so called “religious values” (which are not really religious but I am going to talk about that later in other post), these typical thoughts that some of us disagree with and in fact want to change are nothing but what Syrian society is made of. Hence opposing this campaign mean that I am opposing a whole society, and by doing so, my opposition per se, is meaningless. What I should do along with my opposition is talking as well, really talking and explaining and let the other understand where I come from, which I haven’t done in a long time and I was wrong not doing so.

Let me continue explaining why this campaign is the only authentic campaign Syrian bloggers that has ever launched: it’s because it is a non-virtual campaign. The virtual becomes a non-virtual for the first time in the Syrian blogsphere concerning an unspeakable taboo. As the matter of fact, it is the only non-virtual campaign the Syrian bloggers have ever launched.

Syrian bloggers calling for freedom of speech in Syria is like fucking for virginity. And Syrian bloggers calling for the liberation of Palestine and Golan heights is exclusively virtually authenticated; it means that it is only real in the virtual world, so I am not sure how real it is.

Syrian citizens cannot non-virtually be calling for any of these matters on the ground. Even for Palestine and Golan heights, Syrians are being censored and closely watched by Syrian intelligence. I know Syrians and Palestinians in Syria who are not allowed to leave the country because they were pro-Palestinian activists within Palestinian camps. And certainly, Golan Heights is a Syrian state matter and not the people’s. With regards to Golan Heights campaign, Syrian bloggers are self-conscious about their incapability to be activists on the ground for Golan and that’s one major reason why they had to campaign about it virtually.

In other words, in Syria things go this way: we blog what we cannot say in public in Syria.

But the campaign against homosexuality is not the same as the rest of the campaigns. Syrian society is homophobic, sectarian, racist and discriminate against women. And all these matters are considered taboo to be discussed in the Syrian blogsphere, different kind of taboo: we all pretend to be the “good blogger” who is against honor crimes, sectarianism, racism and we never talk about women issues in Syria, there are some exception of course but generally speaking, it seems that we want to look good so bad-or that we are in denial- that we cannot say what we are daily living to preserve being a “good blogger” or a “good Syrian”. In other words, silence about problems in Syria is how we deal with these problems in order to change, as Syrians.

So why this campaign is authentic and real and very important to change? for example, if Syrian bloggers campaigned IN SOLIDARITY with homosexuals it would be the same as the rest of the campaigns, too good to be true. I wouldn’t feel good about it precisely because it would be exclusively virtual and thus inauthentic.

The authenticity and the historical spatial reality of any idea or an opinion no matter how horrible it might be is our only key for change in Syria.

I consider this campaign a success for myself because I personally feel that I provoked the unspeakable and now it’s out so loud and it’s time that we have our long awaited little talk.

It also made me realized how wrong I was, I acted stupidly to bloggers who uttered some bad words against homosexuals, sexual liberty for women and erotica, topics that I blog heavily on this blog.

hot?

But things are going to change from now on, it took me Daddy Long Legs, Adnan and Lina and Treasure Island :) to understand that I need to smile and take a deep breath before I start talking.

It is very outrageous for some and for me to hear arguments that are against non-virgin women and homosexuals, but these very thoughts are real, and we need to feel good about having Syrian bloggers who depict the majority of the Syrian society, cause without them, we ourselves, won’t be real anymore, we will think that Syria is fine, everything is fine, and we won’t be able to touch a bit of what is not so fine about us.