Syrian Movement Calls for Political Prisoner Awareness Day

[Image from Facebook page for February 17 Youth Movement for Democratic Change in Syria.] [Image from Facebook page for February 17 Youth Movement for Democratic Change in Syria.]

Syrian Movement Calls for Political Prisoner Awareness Day

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[The below report was issued by the February 17 Youth Movement for Democratic Change in Syria on April 3, 2011. The group, which was formed in the aftermath of Husni Mubarak`s resignation, is calling for the designation of Friday April 8, 2011, to be a day focused on political prisoners in Syrian jails. The report also discusses the wave of arrests that occurred over the past few weeks as the Syrian regime attempted to prevent any form of dissent. An English translation of the report is forthcoming and it`s original publication can be found here. The report is being circulated by Haytham Manna`, Spokesperson of the Arab Commission for Human Rights.]

  

 

حركة سورية تكرس الجمعة القادمة للحرية للمعتقلين

وزعت حركة شباب 17 نيسان للتغيير الديمقراطي، وهي حركة شبابية سورية ولدت بعد رحيل حسني مبارك في مصر وتضم شبابا من مختلف المحافظات السورية، تعميما بالأمس على الرأي العام السوري تطالب فيه بأن تكون الجمعة القادمة يوم 8/4/2011 مخصصة للمعتقلين السياسيين في السجون السورية

وتشير الحركة في بيانها إلى أن أجهزة الأمن السورية قد قامت بحملة اعتقالات شملت عدد هام من الأحرار المعتصمين في محافظة درعا في مقدمتهم المحامي حسان الأسود والمهندس معن العودات والسادة خالد حسن ومحمد جمال الفرا  وخلف الزرزور، ظافر خلف الزرزور ووحيد حسن محاميد ومحمد القداح. ثم امتدت الاعتقالات إلى باقي المحافظة. حيث قارب عدد المعتقلين في محافظة درعا الأربعين معتصما ومتظاهرا. وتقول الحركة في بيانها أنها قد رصدت في الأيام الثلاثة الماضية عشرات المعتقلين في كل المحافظات وتشير إلى دوما وحمص ودمشق العاصمة واللاذقية والرقة والجزيرة وحماه..، وما زال معظمهم في حالة اختفاء قسري لعدم معرفة مكان الاعتقال أو إمكانية التواصل مع المعتقلين. وكانت  أوردت أسماء أكثر من ثمانين من هؤلاء على موقعها على الفيسبوك. ثم تذكر بأنه قبل ذلك، بلغ عدد المعتقلين في الشهر الماضي أكثر من أربعمئة معتقل معظمهم ما زال في المعتقل. بل وأعيد اعتقال العديد من الأشخاص الذين أفرج عنهم من قدماء المعتقلين الإسلاميين. ناهيكم عن معتقلي الرأي الذين يفوق عددهم الألفي معتقل

وبعد الإشارة للمعتقلات والمعتقلين المضربين عن الطعام، والظروف السيئة في المعتقلات ومنع الزيارات في سجن صيدنايا والتصعيد في الإعتقال والملاحقات عوضا عن الإفراج عن معتقلي الرأي، ومن أجل التأكيد على حق كل معتقل رأي بالحرية الفورية، طالبت حركة شباب 17 نيسان للتغيير الديمقراطي في سورية باعتبار يوم الجمعة القادم الثامن من نيسان جمعة الحرية للمعتقلين. وندعو في هذه المناسبة كل منظمات حقوق الإنسان السورية  والعربية والدولية للتضامن مع شباب سورية في هذه المناسبة

وقد كانت حركة شباب 17 نيسان للتغيير الديمقراطي طرفا أساسيا في جمعة الكرامة في 18/3/2011 وتمكنت مع شباب محافظة حوران من كسر عمليات الحصار على التظاهر السلمي في البلاد بسبب الإنتشار الأمني الكثيف في كل المدن خاصة في أيام الجمعة. ولذا فهي تعتبر انتفاضة الكرامة في ذاك اليوم نقطة الإنطلاق الحقيقية للتغيير من داخل البلاد. وتتلخص مبادئ الحركة في أربع كلمات (الكرامة، الحرية، المساواة، والعدالة) وهي ترفض أي شكل من أشكال العنف وتحارب الطائفية وتطالب بالدولة المدنية الديمقراطية وتؤيد المقاومة الفلسطينية واللبنانية وتعتبر التغيير الديمقراطي في سورية الضمان الأكبر لوطن منيع ومواطن حر قادرين على مواجهة المخاطر الخارجية. وقد فقدت الحركة عددا من كوادرها الشابة في محافظة درعا ولكنها تعتبر كل شهداء انتفاضة الكرامة شهداء سورية دون تمي

 

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Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 


[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412