According to the constitution, the Article 92 allowed or it says that the age of the president should be 40. And at that time his [former Syrian President Hafez Assad] son, Bashar Assad, is only 34. And they amend their constitution in five minutes to allow the son to be president. This gives you the sense about how this authoritarian institution works. Despite all of that, as I said, the people, they feel that at least the son can bring some change, some hope to the Syrian after 30 years of dictatorship and fear. And at that – as activists and intellectuals, we thought that we have a responsibility.
We have to do something. Because there is no change coming from up to down. The change should be coming from the civil society, from down up. And that’s an open editorial space for us to build a network of activists, of intellectuals who start writing petitions, writing op-eds in the newspapers, in the outside newspapers, not in the Syrian newspapers, calling Bashar Assad to take a strategic step toward reform or have to take radical reform to change the country. And then after that we start opening our homes and apartments to bring more people to participate in the discussion about the role of the security forces, about political reform, human rights and all of that.
The Assad security forces, they felt the threat of the growth of this movement, of Damascus Spring movement. This is why they tried after nine months to put an – restrict on this movement. And they decided actually to crush the whole movements when they arrested 12 leading members in the movement and put them in prison from three up to 15 years – all. That put an end to the Damascus Spring movement. But at the same time, we continued our work, but under the ground, under a service, we started building the networks of the activists, and we succeeded in 2005 to announce what’s called the Damascus Declaration.
This is an umbrella, put all the opposition groups in one united group, called for democratic change in Syria. And again, in 2007, we succeed to elect a new leadership for the Damascus Declaration. The Assad regime put all of the leaders, all of the new elected secretary of this Damascus Declaration in prison. I left the country. And these five years from 2007 and 2012 was of course a huge dramatic change in the region, after the [United States-led coalition] invasion of Iraq [in 2003], what’s happened in Iraq, the change of the regime of Saddam Hussein [deposed President of Iraq] and the side effect of that on his sister Ba’ath regime in Syria [Ba’ath refers to the political parties of both former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and the Assad family].
As an opposition movement, we started growing day by day and getting more support from people. This is why, when the [former President] Zine El Abidine [Ben Ali] in Tunisia, where the Arab Spring erupted in Tunisia, then in Egypt, it was only a question of timing when it would erupt in Syria and start in Syria. It wasn’t too late. It started in March 2011. And it still continues, the struggle for democracy and freedom. And I’m sure that the Syrian people will prevail at the end, despite of the high cost of Syrian lives.
Radwan Ziadeh is a Syrian dissident and democracy activist. He grew up in a middle class family in Damascus and became politically active after the death of President Hafez Assad in 2000. Remembering the struggles of his own family growing up, Ziadeh wanted to live in a free country and helped establish the Syrian Human Rights Association, a group dedicated to promoting human rights, in 2001.
Four years later, Ziadeh founded his own organization called the Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies. Through his center, Ziadeh acted as an international lobbyist for the cause of Syrian freedom. Speaking at venues like the United Nations Human Rights Council, Ziadeh raised awareness about the human rights abuses being committed by the Assad regime in Damascus. As Ziadeh intensified the spotlight on Syria, the government retaliated by placing a travel ban on his family, effectively imprisoning them in Syria, or stranding those traveling abroad in third countries. In 2007, Ziadeh fled Syria for the United States as the Assad government issued a warrant for his arrest.
Beginning in March 2011, the Syrian people revolted against President Bashar Assad, who had succeeded his father, challenging the government’s control over the country and resulting in a tense standoff between the remnants of the regime and diverse opposition forces. In 2012, Ziadeh seized the opportunity afforded him by the revolution and visited his homeland for the first time in five years. He continues to reside in the United States where he works through organizations like the Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies and the Syrian Center for Political and Strategic Studies to rebuild Syria into a free and democratic society.
Twitter: @radwanziadeh
The Syrian Arab Republic originated as a secular, socialist state dominated by the Ba’ath party, an Arab nationalist movement. The state has since evolved into an autocracy headed by a single family and dominated by members of the minority Alawite sect, a branch of Shia Islam.
The Ba’ath Party took power in Syria in a series of coups d’état in the 1960s and 1970s. One of the leaders of those coups, Hafez al-Assad, became president in 1971 and led the country until his death in 2000. Under Assad, Alawites assumed control over the state security forces. In 1982, Assad’s forces stormed the city of Hama to brutally suppress a Sunni rebellion, killing thousands of civilians.
Following the death of Hafez al-Assad, his son, Bashar al-Assad, was elected president by a referendum in which he ran unopposed, officially garnering 97 percent of the vote. He was reelected in 2007, again with 97 percent of the vote.
The Syrian government is one of the world’s most brutal and restrictive. From 1963 to 2011, the government operated under an “Emergency Law,” which suspended many constitutional protections of civil liberties. The government continues to use arbitrary detention and torture against political opponents, and operates through an extensive internal security apparatus, including secret police. The government controls most of the country’s media outlets, and access to the Internet is permitted only through state-operated servers. The minority Kurdish population has been continually discriminated against and repressed.
Influenced by movements in Egypt and Tunisia, large opposition protests took place across Syria in 2011. The government responded with a harsh crackdown. Security forces fired on protestors, killing thousands. The crackdown led the Arab League to suspend Syria’s membership. The Assad regime attempted to appease dissenters through a series of low-level and largely inconsequential reforms in 2011 and 2012. However, the conflict has escalated into full-fledged civil war with both liberal and Islamic militias being formed to fight against the Assad regime. The Assad regime has continued to attempt to defeat the opposition using air strikes and heavy artillery to attack rebel-held neighborhoods. Freedoms of association, assembly, and the press were restricted even further as the government attempted to quell the uprising. Over a million people have been either internally displaced or fled the country as refugees.
In the summer of 2013, it was confirmed that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons to attack civilians. Over 600 people were killed in one such attack in the Ghouta suburb of Damascus using a nerve agent confirmed to be sarin. The Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons drew international attention and resulted in a renewed international focus on the nation and its civil conflict.
Freedom House rates Syria as “not free” noting that conditions even prior to the 2011 uprising and subsequent civil war were, at best, abysmal. It earned the worst possible ratings of seven in both the political rights and civil liberties categories. Conditions since the 2011 uprising have only deteriorated, and civil freedoms are restricted under the fear of violence. Freedom House has also expressed concern over rising sectarian tensions and massive displacement.