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Syria Hits Back at Critics Over Human Rights
DAMASCUS, Sept 10 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Syria's official press hit back Monday at criticism from human rights groups over recent arrests of government opponents, news agencies reported.
"One must be very wary of those who kick up a row in the name of human values," the government daily
Tishrin said in an editorial. "Our society and our civilization know these values and practice them, without need for lessons from others", Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
The paper said that Syria was the target of a political and media campaign waged by unidentified "forces which exercise hegemony over the world order" with the aim of making it "abandon its principles, its independence and its decisions."
In the past month, eight people have been arrested for making remarks hostile to the Baath party regime headed by President Bashar al-Assad, including two members of parliament and former long-serving political prisoner Riad Turk.
Amnesty International called Tuesday on Syrian authorities to immediately and unconditionally release the leading opposition figure and independent Member of Parliament Mamun al-Humsi, and asked for assurances they are well treated in custody and allowed immediate access to medical care and to their families and lawyers.
Syria's state press Wednesday justified the arrest of the country's leading opposition figure, Riad Turk, by charging that he had violated the constitution and harmed the national interest, AFP reported.
The opposition said the real aim of the arrest was to "eliminate" other opinions.
"Riad Turk recently, with some hateful people, made the decision to denigrate, defame, and unjustly accuse all those who opposed his attempt to stop the process of modernization and development" of Syria, the
Ath-Thawra daily said in a front-page editorial.
"The ideas of Mr. Turk violate the constitution and the law and insolently attack the state," the official daily added.
The daily Tishrin called Turk one of "a limited number of people who want to create a negative climate by breaking the law, trying to divide [Syrians] and distort the image of the great changes" in Syria.
According to Amnesty International, Turk, 71, had been detained as a prisoner of conscience from 1980 to 1998 because of his opposition to the Syrian government. He was held without charge or trial, mostly incommunicado, in the Military Interrogation Branch (Far' al-Tahqiq al-'Askari) in Damascus. He was eventually released under an amnesty declared by the late President Hafiz al-Assad in May 1998.
The human rights organization considers Turk and al-Humsi prisoners of conscience, arrested solely for their peaceful expression of political opinions. The organization is also concerned about their health.
Turk, a former communist leader, made a series of political speeches in August for the first time since his release from prison in 1998.
At a political salon in Damascus on August 6th attended by some 300 people, Turk attacked the former regime and criticized the "hereditary" succession that brought Assad's son, Bashar, to power.
He also gave a speech two weeks ago on the Arab satellite news channel al-Jazeera that was scathingly critical of the late president.
Last week, 70 Lebanese intellectuals added their voices to international calls for his release.
In Beirut, several hundred people late Sunday attended a film on Turk made in 1998 after he was released from prison, where he was held without trial or charge for 17 years in an underground cell two meters (yards) square.
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