Headlines
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
December 26, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/12/26/headlines
Israeli Strikes on Gaza Kill Dozens, Including Five Journalists; Three Babies Freeze to Death
Dec 26, 2024
Palestinian health officials say Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip have killed 38 people and injured 137 others in the past 24 hours. Among the dead are five journalists with the Al-Quds Today channel who were killed in an Israeli strike on their broadcasting van near the Al-Awda Hospital in the Nuseirat refugee camp. Video of their assassination shows a van clearly marked with the word “press” engulfed in flames. The slain journalists are Fadi Hassouna, Ibrahim al-Sheikh Ali, Mohammed al-Ladah, Faisal Abu al-Qumsan and Ayman al-Jadi, who had gone to the Al-Awda Hospital with his wife, who was in labor with their first child. The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate reports Israeli attacks since October 2023 have killed more than 190 journalists and media workers across Gaza.
Meanwhile, Palestinian doctors say three babies have died of hypothermia in recent days as temperatures in Gaza’s tent encampments plummeted amid Israel’s stifling blockade of food, water and aid. Displaced Christians in Gaza marked a somber Christmas holiday amid the devastation of Israel’s assault. This is 67-year-old Najlaa Tarzy, whose family once again spent Christmas sheltering inside Gaza’s only Catholic church.
Najlaa Tarzy: “Each year on this date, we celebrate the birth of Jesus, spread joy to children, pray at night and celebrate Jesus’s coming and birth. Last year was very harsh on us, and this year is harsh with the atmosphere of war, martyrs and the life we’re living. We can’t handle it. We don’t know how to describe it. It’s extremely difficult. It is misery.”
In the occupied West Bank, Israeli forces killed at least eight Palestinians Wednesday as troops backed by armed drones attacked the Tulkarm and Nur Shams refugee camps. Among those killed were two Palestinian women and an 18-year-old.
Turkey’s Erdoğan Threatens to “Bury” Syrian Kurds Unless They Lay Down Arms
Dec 26, 2024
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has threatened to “bury” Kurdish fighters in Syria unless they lay down their arms. Erdoğan made the threat during remarks to the Turkish parliament on Wednesday, insisting the Kurdish YPG militia must disband.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan: “As I said after the Cabinet meeting, business as usual is no longer possible. The separatist murderers will either bid farewell to their weapons or be buried in Syrian soil alongside their weapons.”
On Monday, thousands of women rallied in the northeastern Syrian city of Qamishli demanding Syria’s new leaders respect women’s rights. They also condemned Turkish-backed attacks on Kurdish groups. Many of the protesters waved the green, yellow and red flags of the Women’s Protection Units, an affiliate of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units militia that Turkey considers a terrorist organization.
Hemrin Ali: “Today, all women in the Jazira region, including Kurds, Arabs and Syriacs, are uniting their voices, saying yes to supporting the Women’s Protection Units, YPJ, yes to preserving the rights and gains of the women’s revolution in northern and eastern Syria. Today, we are safeguarding all the achievements of northern and eastern Syria by demanding freedom and rights for all women, without discrimination.”
Later in the broadcast, we’ll go to Damascus for an update from Syrian journalist and BBC Middle East correspondent Lina Sinjab.
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Meet State Dept. Official Michael Casey, Who Resigned over Gaza After U.S. Ignored Israeli Abuses
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
December 26, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/12/26 ... transcript
After a 15-year career in the Foreign Service, Michael Casey resigned from the State Department in July over U.S. policy on Gaza and is now speaking out publicly for the first time. He was deputy political counselor at the United States Office for Palestinian Affairs in Jerusalem for four years before he left. Casey says he resigned after “getting no action from Washington” for his recommendations on humanitarian actions for Palestinians and toward a workable two-state solution. “We don’t believe Palestinian sources of information,” Casey says about U.S. policymakers. “We will accept the Israeli narrative over all others, even if we know it’s not correct.” He also discusses what to expect for Gaza under the incoming Trump administration.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: We begin today’s show in Gaza, where medics say an Israeli strike killed five journalists who worked for Al-Quds TV in the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza. They were reportedly sleeping in a van clearly marked with the word “press.”
Meanwhile, three Palestinian babies have died of hypothermia at the al-Mawasi refugee camp in southern Gaza as temperatures plummet and Israel’s deadly blockade on food, water and key winter supplies continues. The father of 3-week-old victim Sila, Mahmoud al-Faseeh, told Al Jazeera his family had been sleeping on cold sand in a tent exposed to bitter winds. Al-Mawasi is designated a safe zone, but Israel has repeatedly attacked it over the last 14 months as its forces continue to pound Gaza.
This comes as Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank raided Nablus to escort a group of settlers to Joseph’s Tomb, which has been a flashpoint between Palestinians and Israeli settlers.
AMY GOODMAN: A group of Palestinian Americans trapped in Gaza has sued the Biden administration, saying it abandoned them and their families in a war zone despite rescuing, quote, “similarly situated Americans of different national origins,” unquote.
For more, we’re joined by Michael Casey. He resigned from the State Department in July over U.S. policy on Gaza after a 15-year career in the Foreign Service. He served nine years before that in the U.S. Army. He was deputy political counselor at the United States Office for Palestinian Affairs in Jerusalem for four years before resigning. He’s joining us now from Michigan.
Welcome to Democracy Now!, Mike Casey. So, you resigned in July. You’re making the reasons for your resignation public now. Explain what happened and why you’ve decided to leave your career.
MICHAEL CASEY: Well, first of all, thank you for having me on the show. I really appreciate it.
I’ve been trying to get the story out, honestly, since I left. I’ve talked to sort of multiple journalists who, you know, for various reasons, weren’t able to publish the story until recently. So, I’ve been trying to get the story out since that time.
And really, why I left was that after I covered Gaza almost every day for three years and just writing every day about what was happening there, even before October 7th, the humanitarian catastrophe that was there beforehand, and just getting no action from Washington on any of those issues. And we also, my office, wrote about Palestinian politics, settlements, human rights issues, prisoner abuses, different things like this, every day writing about them. And then, October 7th, everything was just amplified, you know, a hundred times worse than it was before. And just writing all this information, having it disregarded, taking no actions and no policies on it, and acting constantly in direct contravention of our own interests was eventually too much for me, and I decided I had done everything I could to help, there was nothing more I could do on the inside, and it was time for me to leave.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Mike, you’ve said, in fact, that once you were posted in Jerusalem, everything you learned as a diplomat, you had to forget. If you could elaborate on what you mean by that?
MICHAEL CASEY: Sure. It’s just — and that’s the way it feels. You know, basic things as a diplomat, to be skeptical of your interlocutors. You know, when the government of the country you’re assigned to tells you something, you have to fact-check it a little bit. But with the Israeli government, we don’t do that. We just repeat what they tell us. We don’t even report on that information.
And, you know, having basic concerns for issues like human rights, that was a bedrock of our foreign policy in other places, and in Israel, we just completely disregard it. I mean, one issue I always highlight was administrative detention, which is where people are locked up without charges. You know, when I was in other countries, like Malaysia, there was maybe one person in admin detention, and the secretary of state would raise her case all the time, whereas in Israel, we were approaching 2,000 Palestinians were being held in admin detention, including minors, including American citizens, and we never said a word about it. And so, just these issues that you would normally push forward everywhere else, in this country we just pretend like it’s not a problem.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, in your reading, Mike — you worked at the State Department; before that, you were also in the military — what, in your view, explains this? Why do you think the U.S. is consistently blind to the suffering of Palestinians?
MICHAEL CASEY: It’s hard to get a concrete answer on that as to why that is, just seeing it happen every day and what we do with that and just the absolute disregard of reality that we have. And it’s good to see organizations like DAWN who are launching a lawsuit — it’s sad that it had to come to this point, but launching a lawsuit against the State Department for violating its own policies, you know, violating its own human rights reports, as they mentioned when they made the announcement, because my office wrote these reports and documented the human rights abuses there. It was the longest report in the world. It took the longest to finish. And then we come out and say things like “There are no human rights issues in Israel.” It just — it doesn’t make any sense. And as to why that is, I don’t know. Our policy is just completely backwards. We start from the point of we need to sell weapons to Israel, and then we backtrack and make the facts the way we need it to be in order to make that happen, which is the exact opposite of what we should be doing.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to a clip from the Fault Lines documentary called Starving Gaza in Al Jazeera English that features Stacy Gilbert, who we also interviewed, the former senior adviser in the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration. She resigned after over 20 years in service after disagreements with a State Department report that she worked on concluding Israel was not obstructing U.S. humanitarian assistance to Gaza.
HIND HASSAN: In April, Stacy Gilbert was asked for her input on a Biden administration report on whether Israel was committing war crimes in Gaza.
STACY GILBERT: I was shocked to see that it said, in very clear terms, it is our determination that Israel is not blocking humanitarian assistance.
HIND HASSAN: You had advised that that wasn’t the case. Is that correct?
STACY GILBERT: Yes. The subject matter experts were removed, and the report was moved up to a higher level. We were told, “You will see the report when it is released publicly.”
HIND HASSAN: And then the report comes out and just doesn’t include what you had to say?
STACY GILBERT: I wasn’t sure I read that correctly. I read it again, and I sent an email then that I would resign as a result of that.
HIND HASSAN: Do you remember what you wrote in your resignation email?
STACY GILBERT: I said that report will haunt us.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Stacy Gilbert, a State Department official, in the Al Jazeera documentary Starving Gaza. You can also go to Democracy Now! to see our extended interview with Stacy. So, Mike Casey, that was in the spring. You were there in Jerusalem. You were still working. Talk about the changing of the conclusions of this report, which Stacy Gilbert said is a report that will haunt us.
MICHAEL CASEY: And she’s absolutely correct, because it’s absurd to reach that conclusion based on all of the evidence that’s out there. I mean, it’s the absolute consensus of the international organizations, human rights organizations that are actually in Gaza and documenting this information, and the decision comes in complete contrast to that. And there is no one out there who is saying the situation is not — that Israel is allowing aid in. No one is saying that except for the Israeli government. So, when we reach these conclusions, we’re either using information provided by the Israelis or we’re simply making it up, because no credible organization is saying that they are not blocking humanitarian aid.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to go to the funeral of Shireen Abu Akleh. She was killed by an Israeli sniper outside the Jenin refugee camp, one of the most well-known Al Jazeera reporters. She was killed May 11th, 2022. After she was killed, there was a funeral for Shireen. Can you describe, Mike Casey — you were in Jerusalem at the time. Is that right? Can you describe what happened at the funeral? She is, by the way, an American journalist, a Palestinian American journalist.
MICHAEL CASEY: Yes, I was there at the time, and it was one of the worst days in the office when she was killed and then when the funeral happened, because it was just such a — so emblematic of our policies there and our policy failures, that an American is going to be killed, we’re going to call for an investigation, we’re not going to be serious about it. Whatever they come out with, we’re going to accept, even if we know the facts are otherwise. And then it reaches the point where her funeral is attacked. The police are beating pallbearers. Her coffin falls on the ground.
And we don’t say anything about it, just at this level of brutality that’s happening, and we don’t say anything. And so, people in the office were just devastated emotionally, because many of them knew her personally, and then knowing that they’re working for the United States government, who has the most leverage and the most ability to make some changes and make some impact, and know that we’re not going to say anything about it. I mean, it was really crushing for morality in the office.
AMY GOODMAN: I mean, you have senators, like Maryland Senator Van Hollen, who have called for the release of the report on Shireen Abu Akleh. That actually hasn’t happened. And if you can compare what took place there and what you felt should have been said by the United States and how the U.S. deals in other countries?
MICHAEL CASEY: Yeah, it’s interesting, when I was listening to the headlines at the beginning of your broadcast, just to hear the update on Gaza and the update on Ukraine and seeing, you know, two incidents, and we’re going to have very different responses to them, because we simply pick and choose our statements that we’re going to make depending on the situation. So, yeah, it’s just that we’re going to put red lines out there, we’re going to call for investigations, we’re going to do things like that in Israel, but we’re not serious about it, and we’re not concerned with the result that comes out from them.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, I want to go to some of the early work that you did shortly after October 7th, 2023. Just three weeks into Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, nearly 7,000 Palestinians had already been killed. But on October 25th of 2023, President Biden cast doubt on Gaza’s official death toll. This is a clip of Biden.
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: I have no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed. I’m sure innocents have been killed, and it’s the price of waging a war.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Mike, if you could explain? What was your response when you heard Biden’s remarks?
MICHAEL CASEY: So, we fought within the system to clarify why we believe those numbers were the most accurate numbers we could find. You know, we wrote about — we had an official response, that we would talk about how the Ministry of Health in Gaza is the most connected to its parent ministry in Ramallah. Many of the employees there are from the PA. Analyses of past conflicts have never shown a significant difference between the reports. So we had an official way of dealing with it.
But, in general, it was — it sort of personally affected me because I was writing those numbers every day in our reports at the time. And when the president of the United States comes out and says, “I don’t believe your numbers,” that’s a little bit hard to deal with. But, in general, it was a common trend even before October 7th that we don’t believe Palestinian sources of information. We don’t believe what they say, whether it’s Palestinian government, whether it’s Palestinian contacts that we talk to. It’s just disregarded. And even the United Nations and others, we disregard sometimes. We will accept the Israeli narrative over all others, even if we know it’s not correct.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, can you explain, Mike — we just heard earlier from Stacy Gilbert — how many of your college, do you believe, whether they resigned or not — how many of your colleagues in the State Department agree with you and others in criticizing U.S. policy on Israel-Palestine, and in particular now —
MICHAEL CASEY: It’s a very strong sentiment —
NERMEEN SHAIKH: — in the wake of the war, the assault on Gaza?
MICHAEL CASEY: It’s a very strong sentiment within the department. I’ve had many people reach out to me saying they support what I did, they’re glad I’m speaking out, essentially giving them a voice to their concerns that they have, and a lot of people who have told me they would be right behind me if it weren’t for their own personal circumstances that they can’t resign, which I fully respect in that. So, it’s definitely a common sentiment, especially at the lower levels within the department. It was always surprising. Everyone that I talked to, everyone I interacted with, it seemed like everyone felt the same. Yet, somehow, like Stacy mentioned, when the information goes up to a higher level, the decision that comes back down is completely the opposite of what everyone has put forward.
AMY GOODMAN: So, you’re talking about Tony Blinken, you’re talking about the secretary of state, when you say when it goes up to a higher level, or the people around him. How much contact did you have, or was there any discussion that you had or others you know had, with him? For example, Gilbert’s saying they changed the results of their report, when saying everyone knew Israel was stopping humanitarian aid from getting in, and yet that was changed.
MICHAEL CASEY: That’s never been fully clear. Where does that decision happen in the department once it goes above maybe the assistant secretary level? Where are those changes made? Who makes those final decisions? That, I don’t know. I don’t have full clarity on that.
I did have interactions with Secretary Blinken when he would come to visit. You know, I arranged some of his meetings. I sat in some of his meetings as a notetaker when he met with President Abbas and others. And out of all the decision-makers at the top, the secretary of state was one of the most disappointing ones, because he seemed to be an individual who’s very smart, understood the conflict, had a level of empathy. You know, when we got our local staff out of Gaza, he called each of them to check in on them. So, he seemed to have a level of empathy and understanding of the situation, yet he’s backing these decisions at the higher level. So, out of all the people at the top that are involved in this, he was one of the most disappointing to me personally.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Mike, could you talk about what — within the State Department, what the response has been to these protests? After you resigned, you and three others got an award for constructive dissent from the American Foreign Service Association for a cable you wrote about Gaza. Could you explain what was in that cable? What is a dissent cable?
MICHAEL CASEY: So, a dissent cable is a special channel where you can write a report saying “I disagree” with whatever policy we’re working on. You can’t put that sort of information in standard reporting, but you can put it in the dissent channel, which stays very protected. It goes up to the higher levels of the State Department. They do read and they do respond to it and address those issues.
When we won the award, we actually had to look back at our dissent cables, because we wrote more than one, to figure out which one they were talking about in particular. A lot of the details, I don’t want to get into, for sort of reasons of classification. The overall question was that we need to do more to evacuate people from Gaza. You know, we evacuated American citizens out of Gaza, but then we just stopped. And we were not evacuating people who we had worked with over the years, people that had been contacts of ours, people we’d sent on exchange programs, people we had invested in, people who were the future of Gaza, that really need to be helped and protected, not just for humanitarian reasons, but really for what’s going to happen in Gaza in the future. And so, we basically wrote a dissent cable about that, which obviously didn’t change the policies there, particularly after Rafah was shut down.
AMY GOODMAN: So, Mike Casey, can you talk about the last straw for you? You were in Jerusalem, one of the top State Department officials there, when the National Security Council said they should just back what Israelis want for post-conflict Gaza. Explain what you understand that is and why you left.
MICHAEL CASEY: So, that was one area, as things were moving forward in Gaza, that I stayed a little bit longer, thinking this is one area where maybe we can make a positive impact, is really laying out what needs to happen in the future in Gaza. And we laid out a plan that involved the humanitarian aspects of it, security aspects of it, governance aspects of it, what needs to happen in terms of connecting Gaza with the rest of Palestine, you know, inserting a credible Palestinian government at the governor, ministerial and local level, and integrating it, creating a second state, two-state solution — everything like that that would fit within our goals and what’s best for Gaza. And the response was, “Well, the Israelis have a different plan, and we’re just going to go with that.” And the current plan is —
AMY GOODMAN: And that plan is?
MICHAEL CASEY: — the idea of — the current plan, as I understand it, was having local families — they use the term “clans” — to run things in Gaza. And we wrote reports about why that’s not feasible, it’s not going to work, and that the reason the Israelis support that plan is because it will lead to chaos and conflict in Gaza, which is their goal in what is happening there. It’s not our goal. It shouldn’t be. And it’s not a feasible plan. And I’ve talked to contacts of mine in Cairo who’ve said, even just a couple weeks ago, people from Washington were still reaching out to them and asking about this plan. So, it seems we’re still pursuing it, even though we know it’s not feasible and it’s not right.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Mike, finally, as we end, if you could talk about what your concerns are about the incoming Trump administration with respect to U.S. policy on Palestine? He said earlier this month that if the Israeli hostages are not returned by Inauguration Day — that is, January 20th — quote, “all hell is going to break out.”
MICHAEL CASEY: And unfortunately, I’m not optimistic about an incoming administration. I fear they’re going to basically pick up where they left off in terms of where the Israeli government was planning to formally announce or annex settlements in the West Bank and other destructive policies which are not only terrible for Palestinians, but also very difficult to reverse in a future administration. And so, I fear they’re going to pick up where they left off. I feel Israel is going to be given even more of a blank check than they have under the Biden administration, and that there will be steps taken, like annexation of certain areas, that the Trump administration doesn’t understand the impact of those, because they don’t analyze them very carefully and simply just accept whatever Israel wants them to do, even more so than the Biden administration.
But if I were to give them advice, I would tell them to really focus on having a policy on Palestine, not just viewing it through the lens of Israel and what Israel wants, but what’s good for Palestinians, what’s best for our own interests there. If we want a two-state solution, we need to create a second state. We can’t just put “Palestine” in quotes in reports and pretend like it doesn’t exist. We need to create a political and economic, social, cultural entity that is Palestine, recognize the country, stop denying its existence at the United Nations and others, and really push forward policies such as a national election and different things like that, that are important for the Palestinian people, regardless of what the impact is on Israel.
AMY GOODMAN: Michael Casey, we want to thank you for being with us. Mike resigned from the State Department in July after a 15-year career in the Foreign Service. He was deputy political counselor at the United States Office for Palestinian Affairs in Jerusalem for four years before resigning in July over U.S. policy on Gaza.
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Back in Syria After Exile, BBC Reporter Lina Sinjab on “Joy” & Calls for Prosecution, Reconciliation
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
December 26, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/12/26 ... transcript
"Assad's police threatened to bury me and my reporting. Now I'm back, and free"
We go to Damascus for an update on the state of affairs in Syria after the surprise collapse of the long-reigning Assad regime, with BBC Middle East correspondent Lina Sinjab. She is reporting in Syria for the first time in over a decade, after she was forced to flee the country in 2013. She relays the “sense of freedom and joy” now present on the streets of Damascus, where ordinary Syrians, for the first time in generations, “feel that they are liberated and they are proud of where they are today.” Current estimates put the number of forced disappearances under the Assad government at 300,000 likely tortured in prisons and buried in mass graves. We discuss Syria’s new transitional government, led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, and whether it can fulfill its promises of inclusion and accountability for all Syrians. “There’s no way for peace and stability to happen in Syria without a prosecution, without a legal system that will hold those who have blood on their hands accountable, for the sake of reconciliation in the country,” says Sinjab.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: We turn now to the latest developments in Syria in the wake of the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime earlier the month. On Wednesday, the first widespread demonstrations took place in cities across Syria after a widely shared video showed an attack on an Alawite shrine in the north. Syria’s new rulers said the video was old and had been shared to, quote, “stir up strife.” Al-Assad belonged to the Alawite sect.
AMY GOODMAN: This comes as thousands of women rallied Monday in the northeastern Syrian city of Qamishli demanding Syria’s new leaders respect women’s rights. They also condemned Turkish-backed attacks on Kurdish groups. Many of the protesters waved the green, yellow and red flags of Women’s Protection Units, an affiliate of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units militia that Turkey considers a terrorist organization.
HEMRIN ALI: [translated] Today, all women in the Jazira region, including Kurds, Arabs and Syriacs, are uniting their voices, saying yes to supporting the Women’s Protection Units, YPJ, yes to preserving the rights and gains of the women’s revolution in northern and eastern Syria. Today, we are safeguarding all the achievements of northern and eastern Syria by demanding freedom and rights for all women, without discrimination.
AMY GOODMAN: For more, we go now to Damascus, where we’re joined by Lina Sinjab, a Syrian journalist and BBC Middle East correspondent. She was the BBC Syria correspondent until 2013, when she was forced to flee Syria after threats from the Assad regime. She’s been reporting from Beirut for over a decade and returned to Syria earlier this month as the Assad regime was collapsing.
Lina, welcome to Democracy Now! Can you start off by just describing the scene in Damascus this week and also talk about what happened around Christmas?
LINA SINJAB: Well, I have to say that it’s been over two weeks since the toppling of Assad regime, and there’s still a sense of freedom and joy among many Syrians, whether here in the capital or elsewhere in the country. It’s a heavy burden that has been, you know, over the shoulders of Syrians for nearly five decades, and the last decade was the worst, as they faced detention, bombing and, you know, torture inside prison, disappearances. So, I think, you know, many Syrians are still in the overwhelmed feeling of freedom, feeling that they belong to the country, that they have a say in the country, and that they are able to contribute to the future of Syria.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Lina, if you could talk about your own experience as a Syrian? You returned after so many years away. And you said, when you crossed over — you were in Lebanon, and you came into Syria — you said upon your return, quote, “This is the first time ever in my life as a journalist that I am fearless.” So, could you elaborate on that?
LINA SINJAB: Well, I’ve been reporting on Syria for a long time. You know, I joined the BBC in the mid-2000s and continued reporting up until the time that I had to flee the country in 2013. And there was always the pressure of what to say, who to talk to, what permission you take, who’s the minder who’s going to accompany you whenever you’re reporting. You know, you always have these two minds: You want to maintain your integrity and impartiality as a journalist, tell the truth, but also try to find a way so that you’re not falling into the hands of the regime’s repression. And I’ve had many cases where I’ve been called in, I’ve been summoned, I’ve been grounded because of reports that I’ve done.
But when the uprising began, I just, like, felt there is no way of hiding the truth. I had to report on the peaceful protesters, on their peaceful demands. I had to report on the opening fire on protesters, on the detention, on the killing. And, you know, I was stopped several times by regime forces and different security forces, sometimes picked up from a park near my home, sometimes from the border, sometimes from a demonstration in the suburbs of Damascus. But I ended up in the last year, like, confined to my house. I wasn’t able to go out or report, you know, on the ground. I had to be constantly on the phone talking to people that I’ve trusted, I know for sure that they’re telling me the truth, and broadcast from my home. I was under country arrest. I wasn’t able to travel outside Syria. But I had, you know, tried my best so that I leave the country without violating any rules, because I didn’t want to provoke my right to come back.
However, you know, the threats continued even when I was outside. Several times, I was, like, put on the arrest list by different security police. And, you know, even if you are outside the country, you are always thinking of the ones you left behind, of family members, of friends who might get in trouble. People continue talking anonymously even when they are outside Syria, because they’re afraid about their freedom, their families, their safety.
So, that all is gone now. I feel for the first time we are in Syria, we don’t have worries about where to go, who to talk to. Actually, even if you walk on the streets, people come up to you, because they want to tell their stories. They want to share their stories. And one thing that is really incredible to see from my own eyes in my own country is, over the past years when I managed to bribe my way in and come here, I felt that this country has become dark and with heavy shoulder, that people have grown old with sadness and with poverty. Now there are big smiles on their faces. Their shoulders are upright. Their heads are up. They feel that, you know, they’re liberated and they’re proud of where they are today. And that’s a big difference.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Lina, I mean, in addition to this, you know, what you described, how Syrians are feeling this celebratory mood, there’s also a great deal of mourning for the hundreds of thousands who were disappeared or killed during Assad’s regime. So, if you could say a little bit about that, what you’ve learned about the missing, how many there are, and what’s been revealed of these mass graves, the prisons, the prison network, the vast prison network that Assad ran?
LINA SINJAB: You know, the detention haven’t started during Assad the son, but actually Assad the father. And there were many reports about former prisons, whether Palmyra or even Sednaya, in the old days of the father, where, you know, people were even killed using acid to melt their bodies. When the uprising began in 2011, protesters would pray for their families, to pray for them that they will get a bullet and get killed rather than get detained, because they know what detention means. And thousands of people disappeared over the years. You know, recently, the Syrian human rights organizations were talking about over 120,000 missing in Syrian prison, forcibly disappeared, while the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that over 60,000 were tortured to death inside prison. That’s all before prison cells were open to the public and some prisoners were released. At that point, a Syrian human rights organization came to the conclusion that yet another 80,000 or more have been tortured to death.
And then we came to the discovery of the mass graves, and many organizations who’ve been documenting and studying from satellite images the situation of the mass graves. They’re estimating that nearly 300,000 have been tortured to death. So, you know, the number of people who disappeared or tortured to death is really high in numbers. And that leaves many families, who were wanting answers and finding their beloved ones, in pain. And what they’re calling for now is justice. They want the criminals and those who have blood on their hands, who are those who participated in the killing and torture, to be prosecuted, so that they have a closure and they will be able to, you know, say a respectful payoff for their beloved ones.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Lina, if you could say — you know, there was the, in addition to the Alawite — the protests against the attack on the Alawite shrine, there were also reports of protests after a video went viral on social media of a Christmas tree that was burned. So, if you could respond to that? What’s known about that? And the fact that there’s speculation that there were foreigners who were responsible for setting that tree on fire? And who are the foreign fighters now in Syria? And where?
LINA SINJAB: Well, there are reports of some foreign fighters who joined the rebels who toppled Bashar al-Assad’s regime. And, in fact, the HTS, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, who is in charge now — it’s the leading force now — they rushed to the scene when the Christmas tree was set on fire, tried to put it down and reassure the families and the Christians who wanted to celebrate that it will be repaired immediately and perpetrators will be arrested. And, in fact, they did come back and say that they’ve arrested them and that they are foreign fighters. And this is a big issue and big challenge, because, you know, nobody wants to see foreign fighters here in Syria.
However, what happened with the Alawite community is a different story. When rebels advanced in Aleppo in November, it seems that there was also an attack on the Alawite shrine. But there were reconciliations soon after. Suddenly, the videos were released again yesterday, and religious figures from the Alawite community urged people to protest, while at the same time there was an ambush against HTS security, who were trying to arrest former members of Assad’s regime who refused to give up their arms. And actually, they shot at HTS and killed 14 members of them. So, that happened as the protests also were taking place.
But the protests, it seems that, you know, calling for these protests, it had a different agenda behind it, because the Alawite community are worried about prosecution. Most of the Alawite community are supportive of President Assad, or former President Assad, and they had contributed or been part of the crackdown, the brutal crackdown, on the Syrians’ arrests, torture in prison and killing. So, they will be prosecuted. And that’s why they are, you know, out and about, trying to put pressure so there will be a general amnesty on the Alawite community.
This is something that is impossible to happen, because the families of those who died in prison, the families of those who were bombed and tortured to death or disappeared, they need justice. They need answers about what happened to their family members. And there is no way for peace and stability to happen in Syria without, you know, a prosecution, without a legal system that will hold those who have blood on their hands accountable for the sake of reconciliation in the country.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about the other protest this week. On Monday, thousands of women gathered to protest to demand that HTS, the new Islamist rulers, respect women’s rights. They also condemned attacks on Kurdish-led regions in the north of Syria. But talk about women and what they want, as HTS talks about an inclusive government.
LINA SINJAB: Yes, I think they have made their agenda clear, that they want an inclusive government, that they will protect the rights of minorities and the rights of women. And I have to say — you know, I’m here in the center of Damascus — life is just like normal. I mean, I don’t need to worry about wearing hijab. Or even like people — it was Christmas. They were celebrating in parties. They were drinking alcohol. And some HTS members, they were even seen in some of the parties celebrating with other people, while many of them were also protecting, you know, Christian neighborhoods, so that people, Christians, feel safe to have the Christmas Mass and celebrate Christmas, as well.
So, I think, you know, that’s something that is unnegotiable about women’s rights, about minorities’ rights. There are debates about — you know, there’s this transitional government because it’s all one-colored government, mainly from the Islamists, mainly men, who are in charge. So, that’s also raising some concerns. But civil society is really active. Many initiatives are out, talking about involvement in the framing the future of Syria, in writing the constitution, about participation of all the Syrian society into that. And actually, just two days ago, the leadership announced that almost all of the rebel factions dismantled will join the Syrian Army. And that’s something also very good, because that means that there won’t be any internal fighting for power, but they are all under one ministry and one army.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Lina, finally, as we end, if you could also say, you know, what your concerns are about the different foreign forms of intervention into Syria, from the presence of Iran-backed groups, Turkey, and, of course, these systematic Israeli military airstrikes on Syria?
LINA SINJAB: I think Syria have suffered for more than a decade of different regional powers, you know, deciding for on behalf of Syrians and, you know, having sovereignty over Syrian territories. Mainly, we’re talking about Iran, Hezbollah and the Russians, as well. You know, in the north, we’ve seen also Turkey supporting some Syrian-backed — Syrian forces, as well. And Israel has violated almost every right of sovereignty and, especially after the toppling of Assad, almost destroyed all the defense forces inside Syria. So, all of these are violations.
And really, as a Syrian, I feel that this is a golden opportunity for Syrians to work together to build the country together without any interference from foreign forces. But I have to say, the most feared one among people here is Iran and its affiliated militia, whether in Iraq or in Lebanon, from Hezbollah or the Shia militias in Iraq. They’re worried about them interfering in the society, causing disruption and causing instability, especially that many of the Alawites and the Shia in Syria have always been affiliated to foreign powers, like in Iran, and they are worried that this is going to continue.
AMY GOODMAN: Lina Sinjab, we thank you so much for being with us, Syrian journalist, BBC Middle East correspondent, speaking to us from Damascus, now back in the capital of Syria. She was the BBC Syria correspondent ’til 2013, when she was forced to flee Syria after threats from the Assad regime.