New York Sun Staff Editorial
December 18, 2007
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/68220
With all the attention to the Annapolis Conference, the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, and the success of the surge in Iraq, the real hot spot in the Middle East at the moment is shaping up to be Syria, where the dissident in chief, as Natan Sharansky calls President Bush, has been taking a personal interest in the democratic opposition.
On December 4, Mr. Bush held a small meeting at the White House with Syrian dissidents Mamoun al-Homsy, Ammar Abdulhamid, and Djengizkhan Hasso. Mr. Abdulhamid is the executive director of the Tharwa Foundation, which publishes a journal documenting, among other things, the incursions on freedom of the press by Syria's current Baathist regime. One recent article noted that in the period between 1918 and 1920, 54 journals were published in Syria, and more than 180 periodicals flourished during the French occupation. It notes that under Baath rule, the country has only three official newspapers and imposed a moratorium on independent press.
It is from an e-mail newsletter published by Tharwa that we learned of the December 4 meeting. Mr. Hasso represents Syria's disenfranchised Kurds, of whom there are an estimated 350,000. And Mr. al-Homsy is a former Syrian member of parliament who spent five years in a Syrian jail and is now in exile.
Mr. Bush followed up on Friday with an unusual, and little-noticed, statement. It came not from the White House press secretary or the national security adviser or the state department but from the president himself, who spoke of "the desires of the majority of Syrian people to live in freedom, democracy, and peace, both at home and alongside their neighbors in the region." Mr. Bush demanded that the Syrian regime release more than 30 opposition leaders who had been rounded up in the past few days — arrests to which the New York Sun first called attention in a December 12, 2007, editorial, "Annapolis Dividend."
"The Syrian regime continues to deny its citizens fundamental human rights, including freedom of expression, freedom of movement, and the right to elect a representative government responsive to their needs," Mr. Bush said. The president has a year left in his term to do something about it. Speaking out publicly about the reality of the situation is a terrific opening move.
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