Ghassan Al Mufleh
Part (3)
We previously went through the third article of the Syrian constitution which represents a case of negative discrimination against non-Muslim Syrian citizens and thus contradicts the most basic of human rights and true citizenship.
The same article is found in the constitution of 1950, which despite all its negative aspects has no other flaw than its third article. Thus one has to pay attention to the fact that some of the opposition forces are calling for a return to the constitution of 1950.
It is certainly their right to do so, however, going back democratically to the old constitution must also mean canceling the third article which prevents any non-Muslim citizen from becoming president of his country.
Constitutions are now the document which proves to which extent a country respects human rights as they appear in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights namely the equality of all races, colors, genders, languages, religions, opinions whether political or not, nationality, social background, wealth, place of birth, or any other aspect as it appears in the second article of the declaration.
If we now move to the constitution of 1973 we would find its eighth article which states that: the Arab socialist Baath party is the ruling party in society and state and leads a national front that works for the unification of the people’s powers in the service of the Arab Nation (Umma).
In other words, other parties and their supporters are, by default, not working in the service of the nation. Therefore the Baath party is the one who controls the destiny of the country from A to Z. If the third article represents a religious discrimination, the eighth one represents a political one. Any citizen who is not member of the Baath or one of the national front parties lead by the Baath is by default accused of not serving the aims of the nation.
This is how tyrannical regimes used to exercise oppression and discrimination on citizens. Since we do not want to get into the controversy of the regime and its political practices we can say: The Syrian citizen is forced to enlist in the Baath party or send his kids to enlist in order to achieve two things: firstly, joining by force the regime’s block in order to be able to gain his living on one hand and escape the dangers of discrimination and the accusation of not serving the nation on the other, and secondly, not to arouse the suspicion and refusal of his social surrounding either in a neighborhood, a street, a village, or a place of work for not being Baathist.
The deeper discrimination which represents a more dangerous breach of a citizen’s rights and his very humanity is when one is forced to join the Baath party even without a direct pressure. In other words, this citizen is treating himself and his children as mindless machines which have no rights prior to their membership in the party. This article has been breached continuously over the years in Syria and has fallen into normality while citizens are practicing all kinds of hypocrisy and innerness. These practices themselves represent an explicit breach of people’s humanity; humans do not practice hypocrisy and innerness unless they are in a state of fear from revealing their true selves. The elements of fear in this case are either the incapacity to gain a living anymore or imprisonment.
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