Posted in Notes Urban
Wassim Tarif, who lived in the country, elude the censors with its network of contacts. Excerpts from the interview in The Nation :
activist and human rights defender, Tarif was born 36 years ago in Zehla, Lebanon, near the porous border with Syria in the Bekaa Valley. In 1990, his parents sent him to study in Argentina, with one of his grandmothers who lived in Mendoza. The interest in psychology led him to enroll in the Universidad del Norte, in Tucuman, but the call did study international law in the United States, where he completed his training before returning to the Middle East.
(...) "The first years I was in Damascus and then I started to travel to internalize human rights situations. I think he liked people, and gradually gained their trust. They told me how tortured, who were his tormentors. Let me take pictures. Extreme situations were approached me a lot to these people and now I respond with information communications and dramatic. "
But it was unlikely that the activist might escape the clutches of the security apparatus of Al-Assad. From 2007 until his expulsion in 2008, was arrested dozens of times.
"Not by the police, which does not exist in Syria except for minor cases, but by the secret services. I questioned in an intimidating manner and in different departments, but without violence, "he told the young Lebanese. The method was always the same: stop at midnight or at dawn, hours of waiting alone in an office of the Secret Service and the emergence of a staff paper and pencil, asking him to write the story of his life.
"The last interview in February 2008 was exceptional because I felt violent themselves and prefer not to give details. I drove the few days and decided to return to Lebanon."
But work on Lebanese soil against the Syrian government was not convinced because of allegations of bias he received from the powerful militia Hezbollah, an ally of Damascus. So he decided to emigrate and work in Spain. Tarif acknowledged that this did not prevent him back to Syria in recent weeks, though not legally, of course, and observe in situ the onset of the bath blood.
"I have many friends in Deraa [epicenter of the protests]. They are a family that I always receive. To get there I went to Jordan and from there to Syria. We were able to document in Deraa the murders with bullets in the head. But were in contact with the dead and wounded at Banias and Homs. " Wissam
(...) revealed that since the crackdown began, all the information it receives from its Syrian sources on Twitter or Skype transferred to a team of Syrian territory, which check the data before uploading them to social networks. Thus, they manage to evade censorship to publicize the plight of the protests.
Matrix repression of Damascus, according Tarif, has a common denominator: "The brutal repression. From the outset, it was decided by violence. First with the secret police. Shabyha Then with the body, a militia loyal to the regime. In Syria, the viewed as thieves, criminals, thugs and were very active during the dictatorship of Hafez al-Assad. had disappeared with Bashar. But it reappeared in Latakia and Banias ", two cities where there were dozens of protesters dead.
Shabyha The intention of a body similar to the dreaded paramilitary Basij Iranians were triggering a sectarian war to justify the invasion of the armed forces, the last resort and a double-edged sword for the regime before the eventual passivity of the military, as in the Egypt of Hosni Mubarak.
"The big question, and the key to the future of the clan Al-Assad, in power since 1971 - is whether the army will enter the game as part repressive . There were reports of officers and soldiers who were killed by the Shabyha after that were against repressing its own people. "
Asked about the possible fall of the dictatorship of al-Assad, Wissam Tarif not risk a prediction. But is outraged by what he considers the absence of a harsh condemnation of the world to Damascus. "It's amazing that we have not yet heard a clear and united message to the international community condemning the government. It can not be that President Barack Obama has called "the parties" ... Here there are no parties. There is violence and unilateral. Syrian state comes, "he said exasperated.
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