Syria and its Spring Dream

By mid march 2011, through social networks, specially Facebook, a meeting in Damascus was convened which would later become a revolution. “A Syria without tyranny, emergency laws or exception courts,” was the name of the group in different websites trying to follow Egyptians, Tunisians and Libyans steps, who got involved in riots in their corresponding countries. Days later, tens of thousand of Syrians from the entire national territory, manifested themselves against the dictatorship of Bachar al Asad.

The authoritarian government accused opponents of creating an “armed rebellion of Salafist groups” with only religious or terrorist purposes. With great rising revolutions also started the different massacres executed by the regime and massive arrests, besides torture cases.

The international community, concerned about the situation in Libya or Egypt, asked the Syrian dictatorship to give an end to repressions, besides setting certain sanctions to the presidential circle. Last year in August, the president Barack Obama and some of his European colleagues, demanded al Asad´s resignation in order to solve the problem. The petition was not taken into consideration and repression sharpened terribly.

Despite efforts for ending riots pacifically, neither the Arab League nor the United Nations could set down a possible solution, given the constant obstacles imposed by Syria allies, China and Russia, which hold million dollar contracts with Syria.

Only one year after riots took place, a deadline for the cessation of violence could be established. Even though the deadline was met on April 12, the Syrian dictatorship kept attacking rebels and defenseless opponents. Al Asad broke the agreement and bombarded Homs again, an emblematic city for the resistance.

The consequences of more than a year of internal fight are alarming. According to the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights, the riots caused at least 10,000 deaths in 13 months of fighting; the arrest of 80,000 opponents, thousands of them tortured; 200,000 refugees were displaced from the national territory and 55,000 found refuge in Turkey, Irak, Lebanon and Jordan.

Meanwhile, the Syrian dictatorship keeps oppressing and repressing its own citizens, rising the number of deads caused by the army. The conflict is growing older because multilateral organizations do not wish something similar to what happened in Libya by the intervention of the NATO, to happen again. Specially because of the strong opposition of Beijing and Moscow.

Everything that started by inspiration from the Arab riots in Syria is in risk because of the sanguinary action of the dictatorial government and the international bureaucracy of organizations supposedly in charge of ensuring the fulfillment of human rights. Syrians deserve a better future, without the restrictions of another dictatorship or the sick slavery of Islamism, another possible threat at the door.

The Arab Spring is not over yet, and consequences resulting from the postponement of fundamental freedom rights warn about what happens when individuals are subjected to a horror regime for a long time.