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Bekijk Volledige Versie : Hoop in Syrie dankzij een nieuw Irak



GeenKritiek
01-01-05, 18:33
Letter from Syria: Minority activists see beacon in a new Iraq
Katherine Zoepf The New York Times
Saturday, January 1, 2005
QAMISHLI The Iraqi election later this month may be evoking skepticism in much of the world, but here in northeastern Syria, home to concentrations of several ethnic minorities, it is evoking a kind of earnest hope.
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"Iraq is like the stone thrown into the pool," Vahan Kirakos, a Syrian of Armenian ethnicity, said recently.
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Though Syria's Constitution grants equal opportunities to all ethnic and religious groups in this very diverse country, minority activists say their rights are far from equal. They may not form legal political parties or publish newspapers in minority languages. More than 150,000 members of Syria's largest minority, the Kurds, area actually denied citizenship. Minority issues remain one of the infamous "red lines," the litany of forbidden topics that Syrians have long avoided mentioning in public.
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But in the 20 months since Saddam Hussein was removed from power in Iraq, that has begun to change, with minority activists beginning to speak openly of their hopes that a ripple effect from next door may bring changes at home.
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And here in Syria's far northeastern province of Hasakah, which borders Turkey and Iraq, there are signs of a new restlessness.
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In March, more than 3,000 Kurds in Qamishli, a city in Hasakah Province on the Turkish border, took part in antigovernment protests, which led to clashes with Syrian security forces and more than 25 deaths.
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In late October, more than 2,000 Assyrian Christians in the provincial capital, Hasakah City, held a demonstration calling for equal treatment by the local police. The demonstration, which Hasakah residents say was the first time Assyrians in Syria held a public protest, followed an episode in which two Christians were killed by Muslims who called them "Bush supporters," and "Christian dogs."
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Nimrod Sulayman, a former member of the Syrian Communist Party's Central Committee, said Hasakah's proximity to Iraq and demographic diversity meant that residents of the province were watching events in Iraq and taking inspiration from the freedoms being introduced there.
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"This Assyrian protest in Hasakah was caused by a personal dispute, but the way the people wanted their problem solved was a result of the Iraqi impact," Sulayman said. "They see that demonstrating is a civilized way to express a position."
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"Since the war in Iraq, this complex of fear has been broken, and we feel greater freedom to express ourselves," he added.
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Sulayman noted that members of minority groups in Hasakah had also been energized by a sense of brotherhood with their counterparts in Iraq.
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"For example, when Massoud Barzani announced that Kurdish would be officially recognized as one of the main languages in Iraq, the Kurds in Hasakah were out in the streets celebrating, expressing their joy," Sulayman said, referring to the leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party in Iraq.
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Taher Sfog, the secretary general of Syria's illegal Kurdish Democratic National Party, suggested that in some sense, Iraq and Syria were mirror images of one another, as they shared a roughly similar ethnic composition and a political heritage of Baathism, the secular Arab nationalist policy of Saddam and Bashar Assad, the Syrian president.
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"Kurds in Syria feel relieved when we see Kurds in Iraq getting their rights and holding news conferences," Sfog said, bundled up against the chill in the living room of his home in Qamishli. "Democracy there will lead to a push in Syria too."
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In fact, Saddam's government had long been estranged from Syria's. Before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, many Iraqi politicians who opposed Saddam made their homes in Damascus, and there was little movement between Iraq and Syria.
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Basil Dahdouh, a member of the illegal Syrian Nationalist Social Party who represents Damascus in the Syrian Parliament as an independent, said renewed contact with Iraq, as well as the chance to observe the changes taking place there at close range, was leading many Syrians to actively question their own political ideals. "The Iraq question has raised the idea of what kind of state we want," he said.
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Emmanuel Khosaba, a spokesman for the Assyrian Democratic Movement, a political party representing Iraq's Assyrian Christian minority, said Syrian political life could not help but be influenced by Iraq.
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"In Syria, gradually it's becoming safer to talk about minority rights and human rights," he said. But he cautioned against seeing a single "Iraq effect" on the very different aspirations of Syria's minority populations.
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"The interaction between minorities in Iraq and its neighboring countries really depends on how particular minorities view their own situation," Khosaba said. "For example the Assyrians in Syria are seeking a national solution within a democratic framework, while some of the Kurds seek separation."
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Despite their sometimes startling optimism about an Iraqi democracy's longer-term prospects, the Syrian minority leaders became more sober when discussing the violence that has gripped Iraq in recent months. Not only is it painful, they say, to see Iraq convulsed with strife, but instability in Iraq is causing problems closer to home.
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Bachir Isaac Saadi, the chairman of the political bureau of the Assyrian Democratic Organization, said that throughout Syria, anger over the U.S. presence in Iraq had set off a sharp rise in Islamist sentiment, which was in turn creating difficulties for Syria's Christian minority.
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"Christians in Syria aren't afraid of the government any longer," Saadi said. "They're afraid of their neighbors."

Blade20
01-01-05, 19:03
Een mooi artikel. Natuurlijk moet blijken hoeveel van het geschreven woord alhier bewaarheid wordt.

Het is iig een teken dat de mensen (in de regio Irak, Syrie, etcetera, etcetera) een verandering van macht willen hebben.

Dat minderheidsgroeperingen uitroepen naar democratie verneem ik niet als vreemd, maar enkel als logisch. Nu wordt nog de volledige wil uitgevoerd van de meerderheid terwijl in een democratie de stem van een minderheid ook van belang is. (uitzonderingen zoals het weg willen hebben van de democratie of het invoeren van religieuze regels bijvoorbeeld zijn daargelaten)

Niet kijkend naar de huiodge situatie in Irak om VS kritikasters daar te laten. Ik denk dat het wijselijk is om dergelijke reacties in het oog te houden bij de vorming van een stabiler platform van landen in die regio. Ik vermoed ook dat voor de toekomst van de regio het van groot belang is om dergelijke hervormingen door te voeren naar een democratie. Echter ben ik in enige zekere maten bang dat deze route wel zal lijden naar burgerslachtoofer, ongeacht of er van buitenaf wordt ingegrepen of niet. Macht wordt zelden vrijwillig afgestaan ten gunste van anderen als er geen uitgebalanceerd systeem van recht en democratie (of een vergelijkbare seculaire bestuursvorm) ter plaatse is.