Syrian Women...Between the Seat of Power and Prisons 17-3-20

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Samir Kassir Foundation, Aref Saghieh Bldg.( Ground Floor), 63, Zahrani St., Sioufi, Achrafieh, Beirut, LebanonTel /Fax: 00961 1 397334, Mobile: 00961 3 372717, E-Mail Address: [email protected]

Beirut, 17 March 2010

Syrian Women...Between the Seat of Power and Prisons

Maya Ahmed

Damascus - SKeyes

Tal al-Malouhi could not have known that the few words she had posted on her blog will

take her to the prison ran by the State Security Branch in Homs, and that the books andannals she was reading in preparation for her high school exams two months later, will

turn into investigation documents that she would sign without even reading them.

Tal al-Malouhi is a Syrian girl born in 1991. She was summoned by the State SecurityBranch in Homs on 27/12/2009, and has not returned home ever since.

There have been many recent arrests by the Syrian security services nationwide, made

against Syrian women activists and writers, including prisoners in opinion issues who

spent long years of their lives in the countrys prisons. In many cases, these arrests didnot even spare nursing mothers who left behind their infants, infants that had to wait for a

long time for their incarcerated mothers.

Syrian women have thus become partners with men in everything, even in prison, arrestsand efforts to stifle freedoms. Since the coup by the Baath party on 8/March/1963, the

martial law and the state of emergency in Syria have cracked down on all civil

movements, both political and social, and even cultural and economic movements. Themilitary junta thus suppressed all forms of expression, and all ideas contrary to the

regimes thinking. In addition to thousands of male dissenters, many women were put in

the cells and dungeons of the Syrian security services. If those women were to speakabout the violations committed against them, the whole country would have risen up inanger.

Hasiba Abdul Rahman, the famous Syrian activist and novelist, was among the hundreds

of women who were arrested in the eighties, and who bore witness to the equal brutalityagainst both male and female dissenters by the regime. Many other activists were

imprisoned and tortured, including Nahed Badawiyeh, Lina al-Mir, Samira Khalil and

others.

On Sunday, 7/2/2010, the Syrian authorities in the city of Aleppo arrested the femaledentist Tuhama Maarouf, against the backdrop of the sentence issued against her in 1995.

Maarouf, a mother of two, was first arrested on January 30, 1992, for her affiliations with

the Communist Labour party. She was released in March 1993, before the courtsentenced her to 6 years in prison on January 5, 1995.

According to sources in the Syrian human rights community, the activist Raghda al-

Hassan is also being detained by the Political Security Branch in the coastal city of

Tartous. Al-Hassan was arrested by a Syrian security service at the Syrian-Lebaneseborder on 10/2/2010, after the service searched her thoroughly and confiscated her

documents and belongings. Her house in Tartous was subsequently raided, and her

private documents, laptop, and the manuscript of her novel the New Prophets (which


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tells the story of her previous time in prison - two years and a half between 1992 and

1995- for her affiliation with the Communist Labour Party) were confiscated. Al-Hassan

is married to a Palestinian man, and is a mother of four, the youngest of whom is three

years old.According to a [female] lawyer and human rights activist in Tartous, the reason behind

al-Hassans arrest is her intention to publish the novel mentioned above. The activist who

declined to give her name said: Raghdas phone was tapped, and the security [service]was aware of her every move. She was thus arrested at the Syrian-Lebanese border, and

her home was raided and her laptop was confiscated along with her novels manuscript.

On 29/7/2009, a patrol of the Political Security service raided the home of a Kurdishcitizen in the city of Ayn al-Arab, a suburb of Aleppo, and arrested the [female] Kurdish

activist from the Star womens union Rojine Juma Ramo, who was forcefully takenfrom her home in cuffs. To date, she remains under arbitrary detention, according to

several human rights activists. Also, on 15/10/2009, a patrol from the Political Security

Branch in Aleppo raided the home of a Kurdish citizen in the Ashrafieh neighbourhood inAleppo, and arrested the [female] activist Manal Ibrahim Ibrahim, a member in the Star

womens union, which is affiliated with the Democratic Union Party (PYD).On the evening of March 2, 2010 a patrol from the Military Security branch in Aleppo

arrested two members of the Board of Trustees of the Human Rights Organizations in

Syria (MAF), the poet and activist Abdul Hafiz Abdul Rahman, and the [female] activistNadira Abdo who was his guest, after raiding the home of Abdul Hafiz Abdul Rahman in

the Ashrafieh neighbourhood in Aleppo, in a aggressive manner.

Abdo was subsequently allowed to return to her home after two hours of detention,

provided that she returns at ten oclock on the next morning, where she stayed for fourdays before being released.

The well-known Syrian [female] activist Suheir al-Atassi was summoned by the StateSecurity administration, and was repeatedly questioned, while her identification card wasconfiscated and withheld for several days. The State Security service asked her to shut

down the Jamal Atassi forum which she chairs in its electronic version on the Facebook

service. When she refused to comply, she was threatened with arrest and prosecution.

Sources in the human rights community in Syria said that the Assistant State SecurityDirector Major General Zuhair al-Hamad personally questioned al-Atassi, which some

civil society activists found to be strange. Why should a major security figure of this rank

investigate the issue of launching an electronic forum on a service that is blocked in

Syria, and whose members cannot be more than a few hundred at best?According to other pundits, the summonses in this case were motivated by the topics

raised for discussion on the electronic forums page, especially the issue of the occupiedSyrian Golan, and the Kurdish question where a paper was prepared and presented byPradost Azizi, the Kurdish Syrian living in Iraqi Kurdistan. He had moved there

following his dismissal from the University of Damascus in the aftermath of the twelfth

and thirteenth of March 2004 incidents, which the Kurds call the Qamishli Uprising.The Jamal Atassi Forum for Democratic Dialogue, which was closed down by the Syrian

authorities in 2005, is considered one of the most important forums that Syria has known

since the beginning of the third millennium. The forum helped launch a civil movement


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that was critical of many of the daily practices witnessed in Syria, known as the

Damascus Spring. At the time, Suheir, the Syrian intellectual Jamal al-Attassis wife,

chaired the forum.

The Forum bears the name of the intellectual Jamal al-Attassi, one of the founders of theArab Socialist Baath party along with Salah Bitar and Michel Aflaq. He became a

Nasserist later. In addition to the cause of Arab unity, al-Attassi focused on the nationscauses such as Algeria during the colonial era, the Palestinian Cause and the embargo on

Iraq.

Syrian media outlets close to the opposition said that the Syrian [female] lawyer and

human rights activist Majdoulin Ali Hassan, member of the Syrian Bar AssociationsTartous branch, is being threatened of expulsion from the association and of being barred

from law practice, for refusing an explicit request from the Syrian General Intelligence

service ordering her to steal personal information from the UN High Commissioner for

Refugees (UNHCR), where she has been working since late 2007.

These sources pointed out that the General Intelligence service asked the lawyerMajdoulin Ali Hassan to steal and copy personal files from the UNHCRs archive,

belonging to a large number of Iraqi refugees in Syria, and who are seeking asylum in a

Western country through the UNHCRs offices in Damascus. However, Hassan denied

the news through the Koullouna Shurakaa [We Are All Partners] website, and preferred

not to go into details.The doctor, writer and civil activist Fida Hourani was elected Chairperson of the National

Council of the Damascus Declaration. However, placing her in prison along the scores of

women political prisoners in the Doma womens prison on 18/4/2005, and sentencing her

to two years and a half in prison on charges of weakening the national sentiment and

conveying false news, have denied her the chance to practice medicine and write and

engage in civil society activism. Currently, she is languishing in the dark cells of theSyrian prisons, as do many women who are still waiting for their sentences to becompleted, or who are waiting to be tried on unjust and false charges.

The Syrian leadership boasts the first female Vice-President in the Arab world, and the

fact that many women occupy leading posts as ministers, members of parliament,

ambassadors, and Baath Party leaders on par with men. However, the other side of thisequality in the Syrian style remains sinister, ugly and unfair, with the ongoing

imprisonment of women doctors, writers, intellectuals and journalists, just because they

have different opinions or ideas that are unapproved by the authorities.

It is a sad affair to compare, for instance, the Vice President for Cultural Affairs Najah al-Attar, with the nineteen year old blogger Tal al-Malouhi. Or to compare the Political and

Media Advisor to the President Buthayna Shaaban and many imprisoned intellectuals.This comparison calls for the following question: When will we ever take pride in prisonsthat are empty of both male and female prisoners of opinion and the freedom of

expression? When will we go beyond such abuse of equality?

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Syrian Women...Between the Seat of Power and Prisons 17-3-20