Syria Slaps Travel Ban on Civil Rights Activist

Ammar Abdulhamid, one of the Middle East's leading advocates for minority and civil rights, reports on his new blog that Syrian authorities have slapped him with a travel ban:

The travel ban is not total, that is, I can still travel if I want, provided that I get a security clearance before I leave and report back upon my return. Oh, of all the stupid things they could do? Did they really think they can put me on a leash? Did they think that I’d accept, that I’d cooperate?

The restrictions come in the wake of Abdulhamid's recent return to Damascus after several months at the Brookings Institute in Washington, where Abdulhamid elevated his profile as one of the region's most prominent reform advocates. (See this Washington Post report on Abdulhamid, a Syrian native who spent time at the University of Wisconsin and as an Islamist imam in Los Angeles.)

Abdulhamid is the co-founder of Dar Emar, a Damascus-based civic organization dedicated to translating and disseminating liberal writing, and the Tharwa Project, a center promoting minority rights (religious and ethnic) in the Middle East. The work of these initiatives is effectively to roll back the excesses of repression, censorship, pan-Arabism, and pan-Islamism. No small feat!

The latest word out of Damascus is that Abdulhamid and his organizations have faced a new round of interrogations by Syrian security forces. It is the spectre of international outrage that has so far stopped the Assad regime from imprisoning Abdulhamid. And it is international attention on Abdulhamid's plight that will ensure the continued development of the Tharwa Project.

As Abdulhamid himself noted in a recent article on Arab reformers:

…This alliance of sorts that is emerging between the region’s liberals and their willing international backers comes as a last-ditch effort to develop, modernize and democratize the Arab world, peacefully and from within. This is unmistakably a struggle against all odds, but that is exactly what makes it so necessary. In a region where events have always had international repercussions, no one can afford to pay the price of failure.

INTERESTING NOTE: "Tharwa" in Arabic means wealth, and the Tharwa Project's upbeat motto is "Difference is wealth." This is not to be confused with "thawra", Arabic for "revolution." Ironically, while Syrian authorities harass Abdulhamid, Damascus' Thawra Street - named after the great rise of pan-Arabism in Syria - lies in disrepair:

(Via Damascene Blog)

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