Syrians’ suffering continue as long as regime exists: political activist
QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – The suffering of Syrians in detention will be repeated as long as this regime exists, Fadwa Mahmoud, a Syrian politician activist, said on Saturday.
Mahmoud, who is currently residing in Germany, was arrested in 1992 by the Political Security Agency in Damascus during the rule of former President Hafez al-Assad, and she remained in detention for two years.
“The arrest scars do not go away. Years of my life have passed while living the nightmares that I am still in prison, I have had a phobia of closed doors, it is very difficult for these effects to disappear,” she told North Press.
“One may say that we can overcome this with will and strength of faith in what, but we cannot do it in Syria as it continues.”
In 2012, twenty years after her arrest, her husband, Abdel Aziz al-Kheyyer, her son Maher al-Tahhan, and a member of the National Coordination Committee (NCC), Iyas Ayyash, were arrested.
Al-Kheyyer, who is still in prison, spent half his life in detention, “his absence is very difficult. When I feel helpless and weak, I remember him saying: our journey is long,” according to Mahmoud.
“The issue is no longer, my son and my husband, it has become the issue of whole Syria,” she added.
In one of the negotiations on Syria in Geneva in 2017, the political activist, accompanied by a group of Syrian women, whose status is similar to that of her, presented an introductory document entitled “Families for Freedom.”
The document included an explanation of the women’s case: “We are women who have been arrested, or our children have been forcibly disappeared.”
The document were presented to the then UN Special Envoy for Syria, Staffan De Mistura.
Recently, the Truth and Justice Charter was created, through which the women presented a unified vision for the issue of the detainees.
In October 2019, the first meeting of the Constitutional Committee was held, and Mahmoud was one of the attendees, “It was a frightening thing. It is difficult for the Constitutional Committee to achieve any goal unless there is an international will and seriousness in its discussions, while the Negotiating Committee is almost finished.”
Mahmoud pointed out that the Russians are the most influential in Syria and Turkey, while the US Caesar Act is just a kind of pressure on the “regime, and this does not solve anything of the detainees issue.”