Syrian Family Torn Apart by Crackdown

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Syrian writer Ali Abdullah has been jailed three times in the past 13 years. One of his sons is serving a five-year sentence for his involvement in a pro-democracy youth group. The other chose exile, having already spent six months in jail.
Abdullah hopes he will live to see his two sons reunited but has little faith it will happen soon. “Not as long as this regime refuses to accept any kind of criticism,” he says.

Human rights groups say Syria’s government has long tried to silence its opponents at home, unmoved by consistent criticism from abroad and pressure from the United States.

Now, there are fears the U.S. will ease its condemnation of Syria’s rights record as relations between the two countries warm following Syria’s participation in last week’s Mideast peace conference in Annapolis, Md.

Abdullah’s exiled son, Mohammed, said the Syrian government would likely see less U.S. pressure as “a green light for more human rights abuses and oppression.”

Still, U.S. criticism was never enough anyway, he told The Associated Press from Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, where he now lives.

Abdullah, 57, began his struggle in the mid-1970s as a volunteer journalist for Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization in Lebanon and Tunisia. In February 1994, he returned to Syria — where the regime long had friction with the PLO — only to be arrested at the airport and thrown in jail for six months. Upon his release, he began his work as a writer and rights activist.

President Hafez Assad’s death in 2000 after three decades of authoritarian rule raised hopes of a freer society under his British-educated son and successor, Bashar. Political salons where political and economic issues were openly debated sprang up across the country.
But the “Damascus Spring” was short-lived. In 2001, secret police began raiding the salons, jailing two lawmakers and scores of other activists in the years that followed.

Abdullah was picked up in 2005 for reading a statement from the leader of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood at a public gathering. He was jailed for six months before being freed along with 190 other political prisoners in a presidential pardon.

His 22-year-old son, Omar, was arrested in February 2006 and sentenced to five years in jail on charges that included subjecting Syria to the threat of aggression through illegal actions — a reference to Internet postings.

As international pressure rose, Syrian authorities cracked down again in 2006, arresting pro-democracy activists, some for signing a statement calling for improved relations with Lebanon.

Abdullah, who signed the statement, and Mohammed were arrested, apparently for staging sit-in demonstrations against the activists’ trials. Both were sentenced to six months in prison.

Abdullah said he was beaten during interrogations, but others had it worse. “I saw people hung by their hands and beaten with electricity cables,” he said.

At one point, all three Abdullahs were in the same prison compound, though they didn’t know it. When Abdullah and Mohammed were being moved to another prison, the authorities gave them Omar’s belongings by mistake.

“That’s how we knew Omar had been in the same prison all along,” Abdullah said.

In the past year, six prominent government critics and human rights campaigners have been convicted and sentenced to up to 12 years in prison. They included prominent lawyer Anwar al-Bunni and one of Syria’s most respected writers, Michel Kilo.

New York-based Human Rights Watch and other rights groups say Syria is holding hundreds of political prisoners and activists, some without charge or trial.

Scores of political activists are banned from traveling, including ex-lawmaker Riyad Seif, whose repeated requests to go abroad for treatment of prostate cancer have been rejected.

“It’s like being sentenced to a slow death,” Seif said of his travel ban. “I cannot understand this foolishness.”

Even since his release, Abdullah said, security agents “follow me around, my telephone is bugged. … Sometimes they send people to the neighborhood to ask questions about me. People are scared of us. … They don’t dare say hello.”

But the long separation from his sons is one of the toughest parts.
“It’s hard, especially for me as a parent,” Abdullah said. “But I feel proud my children were not in prison for theft, drugs or murder. … They are sacrificing for their country.”

Mohammed, a law student, said he has no regrets.

“I feel proud that one day I defended democracy and was imprisoned for it,” he said. “It’s dangerous work, but there’s a price that someone has to pay.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/04/AR2007120401074.html