DAMASCUS, Syria (North Press) – A professor at Syria’s Aleppo University said that he was recently summoned by the university president over a report written by a student affiliated National Union of Syrian Students, criticizing his refusal to finish a lecture so the students could go out to celebrate Bashar Assad’s victory in the presidential elections.
The professor, speaking on condition of anonymity, told North Press that he had started his lecture when there was a knock at the door and a student entered, identifying himself as a member of the National Union of Syrian Students (an organization affiliated with Syria’s ruling Ba’ath Party).
The student asked the professor to stop the lecture and take the students out to participate in the celebrations that were taking place at the university on the occasion of the victory of Syrian President Bashar Assad in the recent elections.
The Syrian presidential elections were held on 26 May.
However, the professor refused to end his lecture or allow the students to leave before the end of the lecture, asking the union representative to leave.
The professor says that days after the incident, he learned that there was a report written by the union branch at the university and addressed to the president of the National Union of Students.
The report states that the university professor prevented students from celebrating Assad’s victory and expelled the representative from the hall, and accused the professor of opposing the regime.
According to the professor, the presidency of the union closed the report and did not take any action (such as sending it to the security authorities for investigation).
Above the law
It didn’t stop here, as the professor was summoned by the university president, who asked the professor for an explanation of what happened after he received orders to investigate the professor, so the professor told the dean what happened.
“The dean asked me to report on the National Union of Syrian Students’ practices and their transgressions against professors and students to put an end to it, because he does not accept these behaviors, as he said,” said the professor.
However, nothing has changed. “Representatives of the Union are still praying, wandering, and reveling in Syrian universities, bypassing all university laws,” he said.
“Members of the Students’ Union act as if they are above the law, and look more like security men than university students. They are assigned to monitor students and professors, classify people as supporters, opponents, or neutrals, and later write malicious reports that challenge the patriotism of this and that affiliation,” he said.
Another professor who preferred not to be named told North Press that he had a bitter experience with members of the National Union of Syrian Students inside and outside the country.
“The Assad regime, through the National Union of Syrian Students, contributed to politicizing and systematically destroying of the educational process in the country, until the universities became a fertile environment teeming with informants and report writers,” he added.
This union has turned into a security apparatus auxiliary to other security agencies whose job it is to spy on the teaching staff, students, and educational bodies in Syria, and the reason behind this, according to the professor, is the regime’s fear of Syrians’ minds.
Spies abroad
“The branches of the National Union abroad watch over the movements and activities of the Syrian students there, and restrict them or even pursue them when they return to the country,” said the professor, who works at a Jordanian university.
The National Union is accused of committing serious violations of human rights over the years, and Syrian human rights networks have repeatedly condemned the role that the union has played during the years of the war.
The human rights reports stressed that “the National Union of Syrian Students is an entity closely linked to a number of security apparatuses and is engaged in dozens of grave violations of human rights.”
“The National Union has suppressed the university students’ demonstrations against the regime and prosecuted and caused the arrest of thousands of them,” Syrian human rights reports indicate.
Many of those students were subjected to torture and widespread and systematic enforced disappearance by the Syrian regime.
The National Union is also famous for participating in “the recruitment of dozens of students for the favor of the security apparatus and collecting information of the students active in the political movement against the Syrian regime in order to pursue and dismiss them from their universities.”