Syrian Bar Association Demands Political Reform in Syria

Date 1978-1980

In the midst of a wave of political repression, the Damascus chapter of the Syrian Bar Association initiated a challenge to the regime to restore due process and basic civil rights.

Locale Damascus, Syria

Key Figures

• Hafez al-Assad (1930-2000), president of Syria, 1971-2000, and head of the ruling Syrian Baՙth Party
• Rifaat al-Assad (b. 1937), brother of Hafez al-Assad and head of the Syrian internal security apparatus
• Muwaffaq al-Din al-Kozbari (fl. late twentieth century), officer in the Prisoners’ Care Association and the Syrian League for the Defense of Human Rights who was imprisoned for 1980 strike leadership
• Nazar al-Derweish al-Hussami (fl. late twentieth century), president of the Syrian League of Jurists
• Sabah al-Rikabi (fl. late twentieth century), president of the Syrian Bar Association

Summary of Event

Governed after 1963 by the secular Baՙth Party, Syria has confronted not only external enemies such as Israel, Iraq, and Lebanese radicals but also challenges from within. After his rise to leadership of the Baՙth (the party’s name translates as “renaissance”) and the nation in 1970, Hafez al-Assad’s most serious popular challenge came from the Sunni Muslim majority, which opposed the 1973 constitution and declared a crusade against the regime in 1976. In 1978, members of the Syrian bar began to protest openly against the arbitrary, repressive policies being employed to silence the Muslim Brotherhood and other regime opponents.

Syria is a cosmopolitan Arab nation with several historic cities, of which the capital, Damascus, with its classical Islamic architecture and modern transport, industry, and suburbs, was the largest. About 85 percent of more than eight million Syrians in 1978 were Muslims, mostly Sunnis but also Alawites, Ismailis, and Shiites; most of the remainder were Christians but also included Druze and Jews. Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, Syria was governed under a French mandate, gaining full independence in 1946. From that date until Hafez al-Assad took control of the state in 1970, the nation was racked by frequent coups and general political instability.

To stabilize Syrian politics under his Baՙth leadership, Assad promulgated a permanent constitution in 1973. Like earlier Syrian constitutions, it incorporated elements of Ottoman, Arab, and French legal traditions already present in the political and judicial systems. The Syrian republic would be Arab, democratic, popular, and socialist, with the Baՙth Party as vanguard of society and state. The president would be elected for a seven-year term, and the 195 members of parliament, or People’s Council, would serve four-year terms. Parliamentary elections in March, 1973, returned a Baՙth majority, but other progressive parties also won seats. The existing three-tiered judiciary, historically autonomous from Ottoman and French administrators, was guaranteed independence from the executive and the legislature. The 1973 constitution also created a High Constitutional Court. Existing civil, commercial, and criminal codes remained in effect, but so did a 1962 state of emergency declaration and extraconstitutional state security courts.

The most controversial clauses in the constitution dealt with the role of religion in the Syrian state. The draft constitution, proposed by Assad and accepted by the People’s Council in late January, 1973, reflected the concerns of secular Baՙthists and minority Alawites who dominated the executive branch of government. It guaranteed freedom of religion and respect for all faiths. Such secularism was anathema to conservative Sunni Muslims, especially in cities such as Hama and Homs, where demonstrations broke out in February. Although the protesters were forcibly dispersed, in deference to the fundamentalists’ demands the draft constitution was amended to require that the president of the republic be a Muslim and to affirm that Islamic doctrine and jurisprudence would be the main source of legislation.

These concessions failed to satisfy Sunni religious leaders, whose demands that the president be a Sunni Muslim and that the Qur՚ān be the sole source of Syrian law were directed against Assad’s Alawite administration and Baՙthist ideology. Thus, after the constitutional amendments were approved in March, 1973, demonstrations, strikes, and riots erupted once more and would continue for years to come despite the pacification efforts of the Ministry of the Interior.

To the discontent with the secular regime and police brutality were added frustration over Syria’s military and territorial losses to Israel in 1967 and 1973, its expensive intervention in the Lebanese Civil War after 1976, and crippling rates of inflation, especially in the burgeoning cities. A popular sense that both social values and standards of living were eroding was exacerbated by widespread rumors of high-level corruption and graft. Sunni religious leaders, urban workers, new migrants to the cities, and the lower middle classes swelled the ranks of the Muslim Brotherhood, which declared a jihad, or crusade, against the regime in 1976. Their tactics included individual terrorism, popular petitions, and public demonstrations, all of which made them liable to detention. In addition to Sunni fundamentalists, other regime opponents, including Syrian Kurds, Marxists, army officers, and radical Palestinians and Lebanese, were also imprisoned. In many cases, no formal charges were brought, legal counsel was denied, and families feared for the safety of their loved ones in security prisons.

In June, 1978, the Damascus branch of the Syrian Bar Association took a public stand against repression of the Muslim Brotherhood and the newer Syrian Islamic Front. Members of the twenty-five-year-old bar association were increasingly disturbed by their own complicity as jurists in state security courts as well as by lengthy detentions without trial and the diversion of political cases from criminal, civil, and appeals courts to martial tribunals.

Following Assad’s promise, after his reelection in February, 1978, to end martial law practices under the state of emergency, the Damascus Lawyers’ Union presented a resolution to the Syrian Bar Association demanding due process and full legal rights for the accused, detainees, and prisoners; abolition of “emergency” laws and “security” courts; immediate release or civilian trial of all those currently in custody; and respect for all the civil rights and liberties guaranteed in the constitution and embedded in Syrian legal tradition. The General Conference of the Syrian Bar Association accepted the resolution on June 29 and authorized formation of a Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in Syria, an independent association of lawyers, physicians, engineers, and other professionals, which would monitor and report on judicial practices and human rights.

Despite repeated appeals, the situation deteriorated through 1979. Terrorist attacks mounted, resulting in hundreds of deaths, and strikes and demonstrations led to more bloody clashes with security forces, which security chief Rifaat al-Assad had directed to quell the uprising at any cost. In the spring, attorneys began boycotting the state security courts, but the abuses continued. When the lawyers’ and professional syndicates threatened to close down the court system by staging a one-day protest strike on January 31, 1980, the regime detained their leaders, appointed surrogate “leagues” to represent jurists’ and human rights concerns at Arab and international forums, and again promised legal reform. Despite several stirring speeches by President Assad about democracy and freedom, reform was not forthcoming, and the imprisonment of prominent, respected legal personalities prompted more protests. In March, strikes spread from one Syrian city to the next, culminating in a virtually total work stoppage in most cities except Damascus on March 31, 1980. Leaders of the Damascus Lawyers’ Union and other professional associations led the more limited strike in the capital, where civil servants and shopkeepers stayed on the job.

For this conspicuous protest in defense of legal and human rights, the Syrian Bar Association, the Syrian Medical Practitioners’ Association, the Syrian Engineers Association, other trade unions, and the Committee for the Defense of Human Rights were all formally dissolved on April 9, 1980. Within the next month, more than twenty lawyers were arrested for their role in the strike, in human rights organizations, and in the Prisoners’ Care Association. Along with others arrested for observing the strike, they disappeared for years into the bowels of the state security court system.

Significance

The period 1976-1982 was marked by some of the worst internecine and police-civilian violence in Syria’s long history. In addition to frequent terrorist bombings and incidents of police brutality, there were several episodes of large-scale bloodshed. In June, 1979, Sunni protesters massacred more than sixty Alawite cadets in the military academy at Aleppo, and five hundred security police were said to have died in an explosion at their suburban Damascus offices in late 1981. Under Rifaat al-Assad, the president’s brother, military and security police were authorized to quell the rebellion with equal or greater force. On June 27, 1980, the order was given to kill all five hundred inmates, mostly security detainees, of a prison at Palmyra. Suspected dissidents were rounded up and shot on several occasions, and hundreds more died during frequent protests. The worst violence occurred during a three-week military assault in February, 1982, on the strongholds of Muslim radicals in the old section of the northern city of Hama. Thousands of people were left dead on the streets or in their homes.

Arbitrary arrests and denial of basic rights of prisoners also numbered in the thousands. Among 1,384 Syrian political activists detained by the government between 1976 and 1981, there were 25 lawyers, about 150 other professionals, and several hundred students. Dozens of other conspirators against the regime were executed, by hanging or firing squad, and scores suffered brutal prison conditions, including torture to force confessions, according to Amnesty International.

Actions of the lawyers’ union and human rights committee, and their contacts with Arab and international jurists, showed the depth of their concern that the arbitrary use of counterterrorism tactics threatened the integrity of a relatively strong judicial system. The lawyers’ stand embarrassed the regime and legitimated detainees’ accusations of brutality and unfairness. Continued pressure did help to produce an end to the state of emergency, secure the release of some detainees, including ten lawyers, and achieve abolition of at least some extralegal practices in Syria. Seven years after the strike in March, 1980, at least ten lawyers, and more than ninety doctors and sixty engineers and architects, were still awaiting trial for their role in the work stoppage. The professional associations met underground, if at all, and political opposition had been effectively silenced. Optimists saw a reduced level of violence in the society and fewer political detentions; pessimists argued that the opposition had been wiped out.

The Damascus jurists who were still in a position to do so switched tactics, refraining from public confrontations with the regime but seeking to work through the Union of Arab Jurists, the International Commission of Jurists, and Amnesty International to publicize the plight of their colleagues and clients in detention. Through these channels, they continued to press for application of constitutional and legal guarantees of individual rights, including issuance of warrants and charges; rights to legal representation and appeal; inquiries into allegations of torture, “disappearances,” and extrajudicial executions; revocation of orders allowing preventive detention; and respect for families’ rights to be informed of arrests and to be permitted to visit relatives in jail.

Bibliography

Abd-Allah, Umar F. The Islamic Struggle in Syria. Berkeley, Calif.: Mizan Press, 1983. Sympathetic portrayal of the ideology and programs of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic Front and of their struggle against the Assad regime. Presents the fundamentalist movement as a just liberation movement, independent of Saudi, Iranian, or other outside influences. Portrays the Bar Association strike as an act of sympathy for the Brotherhood.

Dekmejian, R. Hrair. Islam in Revolution: Fundamentalism in the Arab World. 2d ed. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1995. Compares Islamic movements in the Arab world and regime responses, few of them as violent as Syria’s. As elsewhere, Islam had become the banner under which elements of the traditional, educated, and merchant elites rallied alongside less privileged classes against a closed, centralized regime.

Nyrop, Richard F., ed. Syria: A Country Study. Washington, D.C.: American University, 1979. Collection of essays on Syria’s history, society, economy, government, and national security. Chapters on politics and security emphasize formal structures: the constitutional framework and organization of executive, legislative, and civilian courts; and the regular army, irregular forces, and the Ministry of the Interior’s gendarmerie.

Peretz, Don. The Middle East Today. 6th ed. New York: Praeger, 1996. Several chapters on the political history of the Arab world introduce comparative studies of the government, politics, and economies of contemporary Middle Eastern states. The chapter on Syria includes details on religious sects, the several political parties in the parliament, and the country’s relations with its neighbors.

Seale, Patrick. Assad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989. Informative biography of Assad’s personal history, his role in the Arab-Israeli conflict and in Lebanon, relations with Iran and Iraq, and counterinsurgency campaigns against the civil uprising of 1976-1982. Written for a general audience but nevertheless covers minute details and offers extensive documentation of sources.