Free Abdulhadi Al Khawaja – an appeal to take action

Posted on April 25, 2012 by

Activists, they never die of hunger strike. Sooner or later they always win. Gandhi never died, he won. Suffragettes too, they won, so that all of us women can vote today. No one ever dies of hungerstrike.

Therefore Abdulhadi Al Khawaja, 51 years, activist and co-founder of the Bahrain Center For Human Rights, will not die.

Yet we do not know where he is. We do not even know how alive he is. Abdulhadi is protesting after having been refused a fair trial. He wants his life sentence to be reviewed. All that the authorities did, so far, was to postpone his court hearing. Days go by. Before it was day number seventy-six, yesterday was number seventy-seven. Bahrain is too far, our life too busy, and after all Abdulhadi, this Arab Gandhi of our times, could never die of hunger strike, because activists never die of hunger strike, one way or another they always end up winning.

Day seventy-eight.

Abdulhadi’s crime is to have spent a lifetime documenting and reporting human rights violations in that tiny island in the Gulf of oil and gas, an island called Bahrain which we know only thanks to the Formula One, the Fifth Fleet US marines roaming around, and a few cheap brothels placed there to amuse Saudi princes. That tiny island, though, also hosts one of the most remarkable examples of steadfast and fearless passive resistance movements – a popular movement against sectarian apartheid and human rights violations which Abdulhadi Al Khawaja, today at his 78th day of hungerstrike, helped founding decades ago. He denounced the fact that Bahrain is ran by a monarchy ready to kill its citizens on the basis of their religious confession. This commitment gained Abdulhadi a life as a runaway, him and his family, in and out of prison, one torture after the other, until that February 2011 when the Bahraini popular upraisal was repressed in blood and Abdulhadi was jailed for not shutting up.

Abdulhadi’s  daughter, Zeinab Al Khawaja, told me the first time I met her, back in 2008 in Manama: “You know, once you know what your rights are, it’s hard to shut up”. Isn’t it simple. After you’ve learned that, she told me, freedom in your head is the only thing that matters. Freedom of thought can never be taken off from you. Just learn to not shut up. This is what brought Adbulhadi to start his hungerstrike, seventy eight days ago: he wants to be free. He knows it’s his right to be free. He knows that if they want to take your freedom, all they can have is just your life. So he stopped eating.

Day seventy-eight. Once you know, you cannot shut up. Tonight, Zeinab too she’s in jail. She was standing in the middle of a highway last Sunday, to protest against his father’s slow death, asking one car after the other to please not shut up. In Bahrain, this is enough to go to jail. But then again, if you knew that your unjustly imprisoned father was being left to die of hungerstrike somewhere, what would you do, would you shut up, or would you scream in the middle of a street?

Zeinab has a baby child. How would it feel to grow up without a grandfather, knowing he was left to die on a hungerstrike in jail? Personally I cannot imagine it. Because me too, I had a grandfather who was an activist and who was arrested for his political opinions, many years ago. When he was arrested, people did not shut up, so that in the end they eventually had to release him. But what if things would have gone wrong, what if at the time people chose to shut up? What if activists die of hungerstrikes?

But no, activists never die of hunger strike. And Abdulhadi will live. That’s what also Bahraini authorities tell us. That Abdulhadi is in good health. But Bahraini authorities are those ones who forbade the Danish Ambassador – Abdulhadi is a Danish citizen, for decades it was the only citizenship the world would allow him to have – from meeting Al Khawaja. Bahraini authorities are the ones who have been shooting against unarmed protesters for years, who have been teargassing nurses and arresting doctors who helped injured women and children. Bahrain authorities are the ones who have been running a cultural withewash – convincing sunni citizens to be afraid of shi’as like Abdulhadi, torturing with electroshocks and drills whoever tried to not shut up, beating journalists, dispossessing shi’as of their lands, forbidding them to work and to leave outside the ghetto they drew on the Eastern side of the Island of Bahrain. Those authorities have been “importing” Baluchi villagers from Pakistan and giving them weapons and orders to attack people like Abdulhadi. Those same authorities, faced with Abdulhadi’s imminent death, decided to postpone his trial of another week, hoping time will deliver them from the freedom of his mind. So how can we trust Bahraini authorities, how can we shut up?

Day seventy-eight. Somewhere in her cell, where they are probably beating her as it is practice in Bahrain, Zeinab is a few hours away from loosing her father. But then again activists, they never die of hunger strike. Right?

Right.

But what if Abdulhadi does.

How will we all look at ourselves in the mirror tomorrow, how can we shut up, now that we know?

Please take action. Advocate, campaign, protest in front of the Bahraini Embassy. You know now, so you cannot shut up. Demand freedom for Abdulhadi Al Khawaja. It’s already day seventy-eight.

For more info, please check:

http://byshr.org/

http://www.bahrainrights.org/en

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Posted in english, oil, saudi arabia, USA & Middle East | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

National Security vs. My womb Security (or the Day Lebanon Almost Raped Me)

Posted on January 15, 2012 by

 

It’s quite something to write what just happened while the discourse on sexual harassment, rape and domestic violence seems to finally take wings in Beirut – and I expect it to be targeting legislative laxity, social backwardness and widespread hegemony over the female body and blah blah. And write it while wondering how many dozens of other women here have so far been going through this.
Cause this small, insignificant, pill-sized matter is exactly what you need in case of rape. Which was not my case. My case was normal administration, star wars conspiracy and a grave breach against the code conduct me and condoms agreed upon a good dozen of years ago, when I started using them without the slightest doubt one of them would one day fail me.
Destiny wanted this day – night – to be right on my full ovulation time, in a heavy state of drunkness and in Beirut. Shit happens. Hundreds of times a night all over Beirut.
Very often, it happens when it shouldn’t, and this is why you normally rush a few hours later to get the morning after pill, knock your body under a massive dose of hormones, have some extra PMS – like mood swings, and maassalam honey.
So, better an egg today than a chicken tomorrow, here I am tempestively walking into a pharmacy before an accident develops into a problem, loudly asking for a morning after pill right in the middle of Hamra. Ha-ha.
It’s then that mr. Pharmacist tucks his nose up and admits: “We’ve run out of it”. Wow, what a city this is, already out of morning after pills on a tuesday morning. I blink my eyes over the counter and ask, “Oh well. Then where is the nearest pharmacy?”. To which, the joke: “Miss,I’m afraid I did not understand me. It’s out of stock from the all country”.
Laughs, incredulity, questions, attempts over attempts, all of this predictable circus follows. But no, it is the actual truth: the morning after pill is nowhere to be found throughout the Republic of Lebanon.

And here is when sex turns into headache, headache turns into comedy, and comedy turns into swearing. Because I know my limits, and I know that one thing is a just-in-case contraceptive pill, another is an abortion in case of a proved pregnancy. What troubles me for the full afternoon I spend bouncing in between pharmacies, is why the fuck Lebanon is suddenly asking me to face the possibility of a pregnancy and the trauma of having to solve it by transversal means. Cause let me get it straight: I am not against abortion. Everybody is free to fully make up her/his mind. With a right to choose safely and assisted by a health care system covering up for the recurring absence of a partner, as they often evaporate in these cases. (Luckily it was not my case. Next to me I had someone making far more sense then my dramatis personae). But the fact I’m against it does not mean I’m sure I would be able to perform one. We all have our weaknesses. Problem is, in this country you pay them all one by one and no discounts. So abortion is illegal, but preventing it is too.
Time passes by. Five pharmacies, 20 pharmacies, same answer. Hours doubling. First 12, then 24, then almost 48 – which is, in unfortunate situations, quite enough time to fecundate a lonesome egg when least wanted. In my case, if a pregnancy was likely, then it was beginning to be too late. Something had to be done.
So being a traveled woman quite aware of the solar system revolving around her genitals, my first reaction when I was put in front of a Misoprostol (in Lebanon, Cytotec) package as the only speedy solution was of course:
“You’re fucking crazy. This is not going up my vagina”. But all I could think of that precise moment, as I clutched on the info leaflet between my hands, was: “What would an 18 years old Lebanese girl do in my place?”

Let me be a bit technical about what’s what.
One thing is preventing a pregnancy. Quite another one, interrupting it.
The first happens with the day after pill, which is an emergency contraceptive releasing Levonorgestrel. The second comes with whatever legal or illegal measure you want to apply after fecundation occurred and you womb is already feasting on preparations for the next nine months to come.
So let’s be more specific. What the morning after pill would do – if only Lebanese pharmacies where providing it – would be to prevent fecundation. Pretty much the way a normal, daily pill would do. A sperm does not instantly enter an egg; it takes time, hours. These diabolic, darwinian winners take ages to climb up a millimeter, usually between 24 to 72 hours, which is why an EC can be taken far beyond the morning after. As soon as the pill is taken, the all Gold Rush freezes: sperms are suddenly drudging amidst a gluey cervical mucus, overies are persuaded not to release any egg, and that magic encounter between Her and Him in the middle of your tubes simply does not take place. (unless it already took place at the speed of light. In that case, nothing can be done anymore). Contras of EC are that hormonal dose is heavy, therefore moods swing as if you were about to have your periods, and sometimes headache might occur too. If you’re me, you trip a lot. If you are not, you just put up with some blood spots in your underwear and no pain.

All this, if you are not in Lebanon, January 2012.
If that’s the case, then all you’re in for is Misoprostol – and a few days of heavy metal side effects.
Because after targeting alcohol shops, the next security threat for the Lebanese seems to be your womb. Oh yes.
So, Misoprostol is an anti-ulcer medicament marketed in Lebanon under the name of Cytotec and dosed in 200 mg per pill. Originally it is a sort of anti-spasmodic remedy for butchered stomachs, sold under prescription only in mot countries. Matter-of-factly, though, it is the third world all-seasons abortive remedy. If you can afford a clinic, you do it illegally. If not, here’s your pill.

Now. Cytotec does NOT prevent any pregnancy. Does not softly lure your womb into numbness, does not secure the integrity of your internal tissues.
Cytotec simply squeezes your interiors inside out until eggs, fecundated or not, and whatever else might be inside, are torn broken and expelled in a pool of blood. Well, several of them. At this point, I hope males are still reading this for their next Cytotec time. Cause this would onlypartially temper my anger at being punished by the lebanese medical system for having a functioning womb.
Misoprostol, technically, generates a miscarriage. You insert a number of pills up your vagina, and contractions start shortly afterwards. Pain goes on, blood too, days as well. If you’re lucky, one time is more than enough. Of course, if a pregnancy was on the way, there is also a rush of hormones that no EC will take care of and that will leave you miserable for a couple of days too. But who cares about your endless crying, when we’re dealing here with the security of Lebanon or the supremely indispensable laze of beiruti medical distributors? After all, it’s your fault.

Then again, it is a matter of luck. Cause Cytotec is no safe deal. There is no guarantee that the hembryo is explanted. It could just be damaged. Or worse, it could be displaced along the tubes, and an extra-uterine pregnancy could then take place before further notice, screwing your system forever – if not your life, in case you’re not diagnosticized it in time for an emergency intervention. More mildly speaking, residues and scraps could remain in your system, leading you to infections or Toxic Shock Syndrome and therefore hospitalization in order to avoid death. The average 18 years old Lebanese girl of the above – not to mention the victim of a rape or of domestic violence who might be too afraid to speak to anyone – might not know that a timely echo is highly recommended as soon as traces of the Misoprostol pills are gone, in order to vacuum aspire residues. Again: abortion is illegal in Bilad el Botox, and any overzealous doctor could denounce you for finding those in your womb. Of course on this I’m talking in worst-case scenario terms. But unavailability of EC is already a worst case scenario per se.
Average Lebanese Teenager might also not know that sex should be avoided until the following week, as microscopic scars are likely to still be there. She might also not know that this should be the first and last time she plays with a Misoprostol without a doctor’s guidance, as her reproductive system might not enjoy it a third fourth or fifth time round. But again, as we said, isn’t it her fault in this country if she has a functioning womb?

To conclude: I decided to take that damn device in the end, as most would have done in my place. Gambling with a pill as soon as possible, it is still emotionally easier than finding out later and dealing with it. Consider this. I was forced to undergo a risk of fecundation and then to stick something between my legs pretty much against my dignity and I’d like to know who is the lazy ass I should thank for all this and why. As my second day of contractions and bleeding goes on, I wish males read it all till now. I also wish the pill will come back soon to our beloved Lalaland for the sake of all unexperienced teenagers and rape victims, if not for drunkards like me. In the meantime, I also have a special wish for the person responsible for the disappearance of emergency contraceptives in Lebanon. May it be the GD of the Ministry of Health, the Distributor of Levonelle, the head of the Pharmacists’ Union or my downstairs priest. My special wish is a nail stuck up your urethra, with all the solidarity of my abdomen in pain.
You might consider it as an innovative contraceptive measure, in case Misoprostol too runs out of stock in Lebanon.

p.s. And no, I did not make it to the protest against rape Law. I did not make it as I was bent in two on my bed. Cause Lebanon almost raped me with a pill.

Posted in gender, lebanon, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Homs – Two

Posted on June 14, 2011 by

Qassem can’t go back. As he tells me his story he even says «Come on do it, write down my real name, there is nothing else to loose». And I do not write down his real name anyways, but I do write the real name of his village, which is Salamiya. And anybody a minimum familiar with this region knows Salamiya for  being a cradle of drunkards, swearers, ismailis and communists – it’s the local tradition. «Yeah, so much for those fundamentalist sunni muslim terrorists the government accuses of generating chaos in the country»,  Qassem points out: because it was Salamiya, the Syrian town of communists and ismailis, to be the first one protesting. «How can you go around calling us salafis? They say people of Salamiya swear against god every time their foot hits the ground» . As for Qassem, he doesn’t believe salafis even exist, for he never saw one at their protests – it takes me a while to convince him that I actually saw salafis with my 2 eyes, and that they tend to have two legs two arms one beard and a strongly washed brain. “Ok then, but not in Syria”, he agrees.

Qassem is on the run since that day his father called him saying not to come back. He was in Homs when they came looking for him. First, long before, they took his brother. That was in march, when things were just starting, and a protest in Damascus ended up in a raid of massive arrests – his brother was jailed and tortured. I insist asking which tortures, “The usual ones”, Qassem answers with a scroll of shoulders. Beatings, elettroshock, the wheel, the German Chair. This one needs a bit more explanation, as apparently it is a local specialty I never heard of: it’s a sit you’re tied to, with two metal stick pushing so hard against your shoulders that your nerves running to the arms sometimes get permanently damaged. As your legs are then tied towards your back, pain is umbearable for more than ten minutes. Qassem’s broche was lucky, he explains, because he’s a strong man so when Bashar al Assad declaired in public that all political prisoners would be released, he did not have scars  – apparently Syrian authorities never let prisoners out if they  bear dangerously revealing signs of mistreatment. As for Qassem, they don’t want him for the German Chair, they want him for recruitment. Recruitment is what his cousin just finished. “They take you for two weeks, place you in squads of ten men each, and use you as irregular, non-uniformed snipers. They give you a weapon and tell you to shoot. If you don’t shoot, they shoot you. My cousin wa sent to shoot on protesters in Banyas. He kept shooting in the air, fearing they would catch him cheating, but the resto f the group shot on people. And shot and shot and shot. If you refuse, they just return you to your family wrapped in a white bedshit, calling you a marthyr ad saying it was the terrorists who killed you». And Qassem he swears to to me, if they order him to shoot he will shoot at his commanders. So he hides around, even if everywhere there’s mukhabbarat and shabbiha and police; sleeps here and there with no plan, no job, no idea on how to continue his university. In the meantime, as they did not find him, they decided to drag in prison the rest of the family. Elders included.

Qassem can’t go back and I don’t know what to say. His troubles started during one of the marches, when a thugh from the pro-government gangs irrupted in the middle of a protest. He slapped Qassem’s aged mother as she screamed at him to take off his picture of Bashar al Assad. Qassem lost control, jumped on the thug, beat him up, and now he can’t go back. Because few days later recruiters came asking for him. Qassem’s only anger now is for missing on the protests. He just wants to return to Salamiya and go on until the end, do his duty, and he says it with such a dignity for the young man he is, that for a second I look at him like a giant.

Qassem can’t go back. He comes towards me with such a grave expression, doesn’t say a word, opens his hand on the table and two empty bullets fall down. I look at them, they’re too short for the army’s machine-guns. «Kalashnikov», I comment, «AK-47», he nods. «I picked them in the main street of Homs, the floor was covered of those after the protest», Qassem continues as I turn them in my hands. Kalashnikovs, they  are rough, cheap gear. It’s the illegal groups, the Shabbiha and the snipers enrolled by the day, who use this kind of stuff. So in the end shooting on marching people is a job for militias, up to the extent that floors are covered with AK-47 bullets, and that way they can keep on blaming “unknown armed groups” for the violence and the deaths, and people is more afraid, especially religious minirities, and and and. «Look at the red one in your left hand, look at the numbers on it, you see? That’s not syrian made. That’s made in USSR». Soviet Union was decades ago. If this is the case, they are arming citizens to go shoot on other cityzens with second-hand bullets. «That’s how cheap us people are, for this regime», grins Qassem as he takes the bullets and walks away.

Qassem can’t go back and I don’t know what to add.

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The Two Homs

Posted on June 8, 2011 by

my piece on Homs for the Harper’s Mag

More than 10,000 people have been arrested in Homs, Syria’s third-largest city, in the past two months. I’ve been staying near the souk, and every night I hear the sound of tanks patrolling the streets, machine-gun fire, and soldiers shouting orders. Everything else is quiet: as the Mukhabarat takes another Syrian from his bed, the only response is the silence of hundreds of closed windows. Occasionally teargas fills the night air. In the morning, Homs turns back into a rather boring and conservative industrial city. Where buses loaded with policemen were parked the night before, a single traffic cop stands stretching his arms in the air. Everybody is in denial. “You must have heard too much Al Arabiya or Al Jazeera,” they say. It would be hard to believe one’s own nighttime memories were it not for the thirty tanks parked just outside town and the dozens of militiamen leaning on their worn-out Kalashnikovs.

read more on the Harper’s at :

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2011/06/hbc-90008111


Posted in english, siria | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Iran running from its past

Posted on June 6, 2011 by

(Terra, 5th of november 2009)

The islamic republic has once again turned against itself, and yesterday the men of Ayatollah Khamenei returned in the streets to open the fire on the children of the revolution. Earlier this week, the line had been drawn for the Fourth of Novemeber: «In occasion of the 30th anniversary of the takeover of the U.S. Embassy, – read a public note – any unauthorized public gathering shall be forbidden, unless in line with anti-US, anti-Israel protests”. But them, “the green iranians”, the boys who came after 1979, – those ones who were not even born at the time of the US Embassy takeover and who were most likely still toddling while Iran and Iraq were bombing each other to rubbles during the eighties – they tried to anyway. And yesterday, fourth of november, a day also marking Barack Obama’s first year as president, they went protesting down on Vali Asr square, Haft-e Tir, and Hafez, shouting against president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and ayatollah Ali Khameneni. Their irony was all in a slogan, “Obama Oona ya ya ba ba ma”, “Obama you’re either with them or with us”. As usual, their protest was confronted by police and pasdaran forces by shots, batons ad tear gases. According to local witnesses, the gassing was so intense that even some policeman fainted while, reportedly, reformist frontman Mehdi Karroubi was superficially bruised during clashes. During the fight, protesters chanted several slogans in favour of Mir Hossein Moussavi, once prime minister during the darkest and most repressive years of the Islamic Republic but lately restyled as representative of the progressive iranian movement.

For Iran, it was just another fourth of novemeber. The last one, of a long list. First came 4rth of novemeber 1964, when Shah Reza Pahlavi expelled from the country Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, ignating the conflict with the poorer and most religious classes of his kingdom. Then came november the fourth 1978, when the men of SAVAK, the Shah’s secret services, opened the fire on the students protesting against the state repression. There were several killed that day, some as young as 13. For the Shah, it was the beginning of the end. But of all these fourth of novembers, it is certainly the 1979 one to ring all bells, immediately reminding everybody about the takeover of the american embassy in Tehran by a commando of students. On that day, they occupied the US compound taking 69 hostages. Among them, 17 were almost immediately released while another 52 remained captive for 444 days. It was the official beginning of the new cold war, the one between the U.S. snd post-revolutonary Iran. Since then, officially, the two countries have severed all diplomatic ties, and Washington is still waiting to watch the islamic regime being toppled because from its very beginning, the Iranian revolution against its abusive Shah was a direct blow to U.S. interests. On the other side, the Iranians have never forgotten what USA – at the hands of the CIA – inflicted on the country when, in 1953, Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh was deposed by force for having nationalized the Iranian oil. The miscalculation, from Washington, was to believe that minor changes and some pressure on the Shah to soften his oppressive reign would have been enough to keep the rage of iranians under control. It’s interesting that back in August 1978, just a few months before the fall of the Shah, the CIA had prepared a report on Iran stating that the country was not even in pre-revolutionary conditions. Quite reassuring for the steadiest ally of Shah Pahlavi, the then president of U.S.A. James Earl Carter – today a strenuous advocate of human rights in Middle East.

That following winter, when the Shah found himself flying over a crowd of millions taking over Tehran, ready to leave the country forever, Carter was no more able to help him in any way. It was simply too late. As for CIA and Carter, they learned their lesson: one year later, Jimmy and “his boys” in CIA succesfully assisted a military coup gaining control in Turkey. Iran’s immediate neighbor and last remaining historical U.S. ally in the region was itself “risking” to go for the left-wing and the Iran case had now created a not-to-forget precendent for Washington, ready to support any ally or policy to maintain a grip on the region.

Things have changed much, since that fourth of november 1979. Nowdays it’s the men of the Ayatollah, not the Shah, who shoot against students; and the utopia of those days in ’79, a country without class divisions, nationalized oil profits, freedom of speech and equal access to health care and education is buried under the discontents of a new corrupted apparatus lost into internal power struggles, while Iran sinks into a rampant into a rampant inflation and social discontent. And in the end yesterday, fourth of novemeber, the Islamic Republic has once again almost devoured itself. As the saying goes, “History doesn’t repeat itself. But historians, they do”.

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«Not in Aleppo»

Posted on May 20, 2011 by

At exactly 13.28 local time, after friday prayers were declared over, an absolute silence fell on the Main Mosque of Aleppo. For at least one minute, the only moving beings were pigeons flying around the roofs of the Citadel. Then policemen moved out from their posts, and a couple od black-suited men wearing sunglasses started walking up and down the mosque. One after the other, men came out from the mosque, their relaxed chattering resonating through the square. Vendors praised loudly their merchandise. Cheerfully, ordinately, the mosque was emptied. and that was all for Aleppo’s friday of Liberation. On the side door, last glimpse of the day was a couple of policemen cheerfully shaking hands with religious men. Dozens of toddling children hanging from their mothers’ abayas could only confirm one thing: no one had expected anything to happen in Aleppo. No protests, no tear gas, no shooting. And indeed, once again, nothing happened in Aleppo.

As internet communications, phonecalls, and public gatherings are subject to the heavy hand of government control, syrians have been largely relying on friday prayers ans the only secured appointment for protesters to come together and ask for the fall of the regime – but not in Aleppo. Marches have been growing at a constant pace in rural areas and medium-size cities since one month and a half. But so far, revolts have been consistent only around mosques or, in eastern towns, when called up by kurdish movements. But all of this, never in Aleppo. The only instance of rebellion so far here, a night time protest by the students of the Aleppo university last wednesday, was swiftly dispersed by a raid of arrests. All gone. There is already no trace of dissent left in the campus. Fresh new graffities against “BBC and Al Jazeera propaganda against our Bashar” – as they rad – decorate the nearby walls. And then again, protests started in the dormitories, meaning that it was mainly people from outside Aleppo who decided to stand up against the regime. Mohammed Barakat, a kurdish resident originally from the countriside, has an explanation for all this and he spells it word by word: “Nineteen-eighty-two”. It was then, in 1982, that army troops attacked a salafist upraisal against the government taking place both in Hama and in Aleppo. The number of deaths, estimated between 20 to 30thousand, was never really known but it’s enough to have a walk in Hama to have a glimpse of that episode. Once one of the most beautiful ancient towns of Syria, now Hama is nothing but a succession of soviet-style blocks. Mohammed swears he witnessed with his own eyes the troops of Rifaa’at al Assad, Bashar al Assad’s uncle, massacring the people of Aleppo. To him, fear is still too much to hope in anything coming out from this city. There can be no more protests in Aleppo after those days. “I’m kurdish. People in my village fight for freedom, and they fight with Arabs, together against the regime. But not here. not in Aleppo”.

Yet nearby Hama, the most heavily hit in 1982, has just started awakening. Despite the closure of some mosques, friday prayers have witnessed a moltitude of thousands of people chanting against Al Assad against. But nothing like that in Aleppo. “Of course, I can’t say there is democracy in Syria. But I know Dera’a, and to me it looks like a town of long beards. Like Tell el Kalakh”, comments Antranig Papazian, a 28 years old armenian of Aleppo, as he strolls in central Saadallah Jaabri square. On his back, children play football, old people sits around, youngsters smoke and laugh. Above all their voices, an endless buzz of Syrian patriotic songs are played over by loudspeakers, while a big LCD screen on the corner keeps showing pictures of Bashar. and slogans of devotion to the Homeland. A line of new billboards praising the judgemnt of president Assad and warning against the dangers of sectarian divide crowns the street joint. Aram admits finding the all scene rather embarassing: ”Yes, we are treated like children, and we are not free. But do you know what I mean with ‘long beards’? I mean salafis, tribal sheikhs, and fundamentalists. These people have have a problem with the regime because of the Hama massacre, and because we are the only majority sunni muslim country ruled by a non sunni hierarchy in the Arab world. Assad is Alawite, a memeber of a minority, and runs a basically secular system. When it gets down to it, me too I’m a memebr of a minority, because I am christian. And I have more guarantees under an Alawite dictator, than joinijng a salafist or kurdish wave of protests that offers me no guarantees about my rights. Who wants to end up like Egyptian copts?”.

Aleppo is split between hundreds of thousand of Christians, mainly Armenians, arabs, and at least 20thousand sunni kurds, while hosting a significant percentage of Shi’as, who tend to side with the regime because of Assad’s staunch support towards the lebanese shi’ite party of Hezbollah. A mosaic of groups which mostly speak their own language, inhabit their own neighbourhoods, and look with suspicion at the growing religiosity of the local sunni community. State television has long played the fear card, presenting protests as fundamentalist upraisals against a regime that struggles to keep everyone united under the same flag. Pictures of allegedly slaughtered Alawis from the coast have been showed to explain the upraisal in Latakia, sheikhs were blamed for what happened in Tell el Kalakh, and Homs is well known for its conservative sunni lifestyle. In the end, for the varied population of a country stuck between Lebanon and Iraq, sectarian strife sounds far worse than lack of freedom. Everybody who keeps waiting for Downtown Damascus and Aleppo to rise up might have to wait even longer. Urban areas stick to their differences. Here, there is no trace of those tight-knit links between families that allows passing accounts on the army’s brutality and the people’s determination. Here there is only what the State Television passes. All the rest is Facebook or “Impossible to confirm” stories. But between Syria’s two largest cities, it’s Aleppo by far that seems far from waking up. And urban middle class christians are definitely not the most endangered group in the country. There are one million and a half iraqi refugees depending on the Government mood in Damascus, and another half million of palestinians. They could be stripped of their rights, or even – in the case of iraqis – be expelled any moment; yet Syria’s capital is by no means quiet as rich, charming, prosperous Aleppo. It might really be that its large christian population is suddenly happy to be a second-class minority vis à vis a largely muslim upraisal. Or else, than a stable oppression grants business and tourism far more than any unstable revolution. For sure, friday here is definitely not a day of protests. It’s a day of picnic, a day when hundreds of families can be seen feasting until sunset in the park.

Caught between restless kurdish villages on its North, and rebellios cities of Hama and Homs on its South, Aleppo is an island. And a fast asleep one. Pointing at children who run and play between huge pictures of Bashar al Assad, Aleppo taxi driver Kamal el Seif asks: “Have you seen this? Everybody in the world says there are problems in Syria. Now, how can you call this a problem?”. It’s the end of a friday. The highway to Hama has been systematically stopped because of the protests, 5 citizens have been shot dead in nearby Homs, and the final death toll of how manhy were killed on the southern border with Lebanon, in Tell el Kalakh, has yet to be set. But next to Kamal, on his right, there is a policeman leaning on his motorbike. And on Kamal’s right, a man in a black suit talking to his radio is just 20 metres away. “You see? No problems here”. No problems in Syria!”. And who would have the guts to disagree? Not in Aleppo, it seems.

 

(compiled for Jazeera English)

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La lunga marcia fra Cairo e Beirut

Posted on March 8, 2011 by

- Cairo

«La maggior violazione della privacy nella storia», l’hanno definita. Sono le migliaia – milioni – di files, conversazioni telefoniche di comuni cittadini, emails, passwords e pedinamenti emersi in Egitto dopo che, fra Venerdì e domenica, le stazioni di polizia di Alezzandria, Assiut e Cairo sono state occupate dai manifestanti. Da settimane, nonostante lo scioglimento del governo Shafiq,  gli archivi della sicurezza continuavano a venire distrutti da incendi misteriosi proprio adesso che una serie di processi per violazioni dei diritti umani da parte del passato regime dovrebbe avere inizio. E così gli egiziani hanno deciso di assaltare quanto restava in modo da assicurarne la conservazione. Intanto il nuovo premier Essar Sharaf ha ufficialmente sciolto il famigerato corpo di polizia egiziano, mandando a casa più di un milione di agenti.

- Beirut

«Spegnete la televisione e scendete da quel balcone» hanno urlato ieri in ventimila per le strade di Beirut. Fra loro, oltre a famiglie col passeggino e reduci della guerra civile, sono sfilati anche dotti musumani e preti. È la “Rivokuzione libanese”, ormai giunta alla sua seconda settimana: un gruppo di ragazzi di ogni provenienza e di entrambi gli schieramenti politici (sia pro che contro Hezbollah) hanno chiamato I concittadini a marciare a oltranza contro un sistema settario in cui ogni libanese vota, studia, lavora e si sposa in base a quale delle 18 confessioni religiose (da quella assiro-ortodossa all’ebraica) appartiene per nascita. Un’iniziativa che sta riuscendo, visto che nonostante il boicottaggio sistematico della stampa nazionale (I giornali sono affiliati a partiti su base religiosa) sempre più migliaia di cittadini aderiscono; a Sidone la spiaggia è stata occupata e dichiarata “Zona de-settarizzata” da un presidio permanente. L’appuntamento è ora a domenica prossima.

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