SUWAYDA, Syria (North Press) – Hussein Burjus, a pseudonym for a student at the Second Faculty of Agricultural engineering in Suwayda, southern Syria, did not know that his participation in protests to improve his living condition and ask for the overthrow of the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad will lead to his dismissal from university.
Fifth-year-student Burjus and two of his colleagues, who participated in protests, were dismissed. The decision of dismissal came on a written request by the Students’ Union in Suwayda to the Deanship of the College proposing to dismiss everyone who participated in the protests, as he said.
Burjus is now working as a taxi driver in Suwayda.
In June 2020, Suwayda witnessed several days of protests that condemned the living conditions, where the protestors chanted slogans asking for the downfall of Bashar al-Assad.
Reserve organization
Students’ Union in Suwayda is supported by Ba’ath Party and is used as a front for it to suppress any protests or students’ requests even if they were related to living conditions.
Last week, groups of security forces and Ba’ath Party mobilized to confront the protests in al-Sayir Square in Suwayda.
These security groups were headed by Head of the Students’ Union in Suwayda after invitations were released on social media by university students calling for anti-government protests and the improvement of the economic conditions.
However, the presence of leaderships of the Students’ Union and the intensive security presence prevented them from demonstrating for fear of being dismissed like their colleagues who were dismissed a year before, according to a student.
Spy on students
Samir al-Horani, a pseudonym for a student at the Second Faculty of Arts and Humanities in Suwayda, said, Students’ residential units “are practicing a security role in spying on students to find out their affiliations and intellectual orientations.”
“Repressive practices against students are not limited to the ruling authority and its security services only. Rather, Students’ Union has been practicing all kinds of extortion, threat and repression by dismissing us from our universities in collusion with the deanship of Suwayda’s colleges,” he added.
Other students believed that Students’ Union has to care about students’ matters, their economic and study difficulties and find solutions that secure a stable environment for students for better educational attainment and raise the level and performance of colleges “instead of suppressing the requests.”
“Any move by the students calling for the political and economic change in the country will face crushing by Students’ Union,” Samir al-Rajihi, a pseudonym for a Professor in Suwayda, said.
“The Union accuses any opposition to be driven by foreign parties that implement suspicious agendas aiming at sparking chaos in Suwayda and reducing national spirit,” he added.