Reports | 25 05 2020
For a long time, the people have been repressed in Syria, and if we want to calculate that time by people’s ages, so it would equal hundreds of years. Arrest has stolen the political activists and opponents from their homes, or they were obliged to leave the country or to hide somewhere.
Hunger wasn’t prevailing, but since 2000 the poor numbers were increasing what caused the explosion in 2011. Notwithstanding the foregoing, there are still some ideas about human rights in the social awareness about people rights to retain their national, cultural, political, sexual and religious diversity, and they have the right to get their needs, and that all Syrians are equal in rights and duties.
This awareness has emerged when the revolution was in its first flush, but when the opposition has stepped in to lead it, the problems have started to appear in the revolution and in the public awareness too, and the regime felt scared of this human tendency that controverts slavery that the regime was trying to devote it with people.
The regime has practiced sectarian discrimination in all the Syrian cities, and has greased the Kurdish political powers’ palms through “nationality decision”, and through retreating from the Kurdish areas, and then the regime supported Saleh Muslim’s party, and faced his opponents.
With arming the revolution, the human value has become low; the armed men have become the rebels and the only people who can achieve the revolution’s goals.
Ignoring the human rights has increased when the political Islam and Jihadism took part in the conflict. This situation made the regime feel happy, because this intervention ends the concept of revolution and its human tendency, and leads this uprising to a sectarian position, especially that Syrians’ memories are cracked since the eighties war, and before that there was religious and historical tensions between the sects and between Arabs and Kurds. The Kurds blame the Arabs for being neutral when the regime made decisions against the Kurds like “Arab belt” and “Racial Census” in the sixties.
The opposition said that minorities don’t participate in the revolution; therefore the human value in Syria has become absent. Fighting sects have emerged, minorities are protected by the regime and the majority of the people is supporting the revolution, but this is not real, because Damascus and Aleppo and a lot of Sunni people especially the wealthy ones showed loyalty to the regime. Some of them were afraid of the destructive consequences. So the first months of the uprising have seen a good understanding of the goals that the people are demanding, but with time the complications have increased and the concept of the rebellious majority and the regime-loyal minorities has become prevalent.
This narrow understanding was controlling the radicals and the sectarians, in addition to the opposition and the regime alike. The international community saw the conflict as a sectarian war, and didn’t see it as a struggle of the people against a dictatorial regime.
All the parties have shared the same controversy, which means the others are valueless and should be eradicated.
So killing is common between all parties, after losing the majority of its armed forces, the regime resorted to using warplanes, and the opposition’s inability to make any progress or to get even with some people drove its members to launch shells on civilians, there are no justifications for these actions like killing and revenge.
What made the human value low is the absence of dealing with human rights for many decades, and these rights are absent in the opposition thinking for future that doesn’t transcend punishing Alawites and some minorities for being loyal to the regime, and justifying how political Islam assume power.
There is an extreme opinion says that it is normal for moderate Islamists to take power hereafter, but this controverts the concept of citizenship, that prevents two-forms belonging to the state, what means belonging according to citizenship rights and according to sect rights, this opinion builds it vision for Lebanese-Iraqi lookalike future.
So, the regime continues in ignoring all these rights, it doesn’t admit that there are human beings to admit their rights.
Human rights issue is a part from the citizenship issue, the more the citizenship decreases, the more the practices of maintaining human rights decrease. The society in its traditional awareness maintains the human being and the historical diversity of humans.
Our problem now is that the revolution has been stained so much, and has moved away from human rights, and that opposes what was happening in the first months of the revolution in 2011. There are chances to get back to that spirit, the world is busy now with ending the Syrian conflict because the regime is too weak, and the situation is threatening the region. If I assume this opinion is wrong and there is no solution in the near future in Syria, so getting back to the spirit of 2011 and assuring that the revolution is for Syrians and for their rights, this would form the bedrock for the revolution to achieve its goals.
Opinion articles expresse their writers' views, and they don't necessarily reflect the view of Rozana.