Muhammad Mugraby, "Lebanon, Syria and the Challenge of Human Rights"
Talk delivered at Georgetown University's Center for Contemporary Arab Studies on 6 November 1997

     Today Lebanon is experiencing a very strange phenomenon in its modern history. Although it used to be a free and democratic country, it is being rapidly transformed into a Soviet-style satellite of its Syrian neighbor, a Soviet-style police state that survived the disintegration of the original Soviet model. The agony of human rights in Lebanon mainly stems from the export of the Syrian model of human, or rather inhuman rights, into Lebanon, both directly through the Syrian army and Moukhabarat operating in the country and indirectly via the forces of the Lebanese government which is a Syrian shadow. Furthermore, human rights in Lebanon have suffered from the importation of the Saudi model in the person in of Mr. Rafik Hariri, the "billionaire" who runs a business empire based in Saudi Arabia and who was appointed by the Syrians as prime minister. What is amazing is that most western democracies seem to have adjusted to this sorrowful state of affairs and carry on business as usual in Beirut with the shadows of damascus.
     In the forthcoming comments I propose to shed some light on this ongoing tragedy in a country that is truly unique in the significant contribution it has made to human civilization across the ages.

Historic Flash-back
     Beirut hosted the oldest law school known in history. The first major predecessor of modern civil law, the Justinian Code, was drafted at the Beirut Law School. For that Beirut came to be known as the Mother of Laws: Berytus nutrix legum.
     The Phoenicians were pioneers in democracy on the basis of written constitutions which became models for the old World to copy. They introduced the institution of the senate. They infinitely enhanced the power of language by inventing the alphabet.
     In modern times, Lebanon, a founding member of the United Nations, played a central role in the drafting of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights through its chief UN representative at the time, Dr. Charles Malek. Dr. Malek, in partnership with Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, was the prime force behind drafting the declaration and pushing it through the various UN committees, that he chaired at that time, to final conclusion.
     Between ancient and modern times Lebanon benefited greatly and equally from the humanistic messages of Christianity and Islam and freely interacted with Judaism. Phoenician masons, led by the famous architect Hiram, were dispatched by King Hiram of Tyre to build the Temple in Jerusalem for King Solomon. According to tradition Jesus brought his message of peace to Lebanon and performed some of his most famous miracles at the southern town of Qana in the presence of his mother the Virgin Mary. The Maronite monks and their church escaped the persecution of the official church in Byzantium into the freedom of the Bikaa and Mount Lebanon where they have thrived ever since. The Shiites found in Lebanon freedom from the persecution of the Omayad Caliphs and were eventually called upon to send their theology teachers to Iran to help covert it to Shiism. The Druzes fled the persecution of the Egyptian Sultans to continue to practice their religion freely in the mountains of Lebanon.
     Al Imam Al Aouzaii, one of the major Sunni Moslem theologians and a Lebanese, is one of the oldest known human rights advocates. He took a famous stand against the persecution of Christians. Al Aouzai was only faithful to the commands of the Prophet Mohamad who had made one of the most famous human rights declarations of all times: "All beings are the children of God and God loves most the child who is most helpful to his other children." In Islam, God is never referred to as the lord of the Muslims. He is always described as Rab Al Alameen, Lord of all the Worlds.
     With such a distinguished heritage featuring major contributions to humanity and deep roots in human civilization, how is it possible to ignore the human rights crisis in Lebanon? Let me outline to you the magnitude of the human rights crisis that plagues my country.

The Impact of Syria
     Lebanon is a country of 4,000 sq. miles in area. In this small area there are more than ten different universities and dozens of university campuses. The educational system is trilingual. An equal number of Lebanese students attends hundreds of other universities all over the World, but mostly in Western Europe and North America, entirely self-financed. Tragically, most of the local graduates seek employment opportunities outside Lebanon and most of the graduates from foreign universities never return. This represents a brain drain of enormous proportions. The reason is that these young graduates do not feel secure in their own country.
     Hundreds and thousands of college students and graduates have known arbitrary detention, mostly at the hands of agents of the Lebanese Military Intelligence branch, but many at the hands of Syrian Army Moukhabrat. This they get for trying to exercise their right of free speech and association. Job opportunities in the Government are closed except to the select few who are loyal to the ruling establishment endorsed by the big brothers in Damascus who yield full control of Lebanonıs destiny. Job discrimination is further deepened by the openly practiced confessional discrimination in the private sector. These young men and women feel that they are not recognized either as human beings or as citizens.
     Lebanon has paid a heavy price for being a member of the Arab League and a neighbor of Syria, a country which has been ruled by various military regimes since the middle of this century. The last of these regimes, the current government of General Hafiz Al Assad, has proved to be most durable. As military officers are the least capable government administrators, the agriculture-based Syrian economy suffered tremendously. The military establishment became the sole power base for the Syrian rulers and suddenly it was consuming the lionıs share of the national budget in the name of preparing for war against Israel. Military service took away many of the prime years of Syrian youths except for those who were capable of paying the huge financial ransom for exclusion from the draft. The educational system was nationalized and completely Arabized as to the language of instruction. The rule of law completely disappeared and the bar association was decimated. The Syrian rulers sought to guarantee their own security by denying security to every other Syrian. Arbitrary arrests and detentions became the rule rather than the exception and dissent was dealt with mercilessly. To make a long story short, the best and the brightest young Syrians, who were not thrown in jail for long years or indefinitely, left the country, never to return except as visitors with foreign passports. The managers and businessmen who were able to allude detention left never to return on Syrian identification papers. Syria had to import food instead of exporting it. Its infant production industry was crippled. Its emerging services sector was destroyed.
     Eventually a new business class surfaced in Syria. This class consisted of relatives of Mr. Assad and his associates. Corruption became official business.
     This is the kind of "human rights" culture that started descending on Lebanon from the day the country was forced to become a launching ground for a military confrontation with Israel that was not its own, culminating with the infamous "Cairo Agreement" signed in 1969 under heavy Syrian pressure. This agreement created a virtual state within a state for the Palestinian armed organizations on Lebanese territory. In 1976 the Syrian Army marched into Lebanon under the banner of curbing the Palestinians and preventing them from taking over the country. But the Syrians did not dissuade the PLO from continuing the confrontation with Israel that eventually provoked the Israeli Army into invading Lebanon in 1978 and again in 1982. The second Israeli incursion resulted in kicking the Palestinians out of Lebanon and sending the PLO leadership into Tunisian exile, but not the Syrians who stayed on. They first played dead then they resumed active interference in Lebanese affairs.
     This Syrian "culture" triumphed with the total Syrian take-over of Lebanon on October 13, 1990, when Syrian soldiers marched into the ruins of the Lebanese presidential palace at Baabda. Since that fateful day Lebanon has been run as a fully owned subsidiary of the Syrian regime. The pictures of Mr. Assad and his two sons greet passengers at the Beirut International Airport much as they do at the Damascus Airport. Every government decision of any significance, including all major appointments, must first be cleared in Damascus. Not only the Lebanese Government, but also the Lebanese economy, fell effectively under the same Syrian management that reduced Syria to a police state, ruined its economy and impoverished its people.

The Economic Consequences
     No scientific or reliable statistics are available, but the real per capita income of the average Lebanese is thought to be down to one quarter of what it was in 1974. In 1974 the Lebanese pound traded at 2.25 to the dollar. Today it trades at 1530 to the dollar with heavy central bank support. Government spending, however, not only kept pace with its former level but large numbers of new political appointees were added to the state payroll which led to an astronomical deficit of 60% of the budgeted spending and 75% of actual total spending. The deficit is financed by high yield treasury bonds. Today the countryıs public debt is over $16 billion which is almost three times the estimated GNP.
     Worse, the countryıs top leaders are all appointees of the Syrian regime, and they are an unqualified bunch. For example the president never went to college and the prime minister's only qualification is that he is an accomplished contractor in Saudi Arabia. The power base of both "leaders" is Mr. Assad's blessings. As to the prime minister, one can also take into consideration his reported wealth which he is not ashamed to portray conspicuously in a country where many humans are living on the edge of subsistence. The cabinet includes a number of ministers who are suspected of having committed gross human rights violations, such as the 1982 massacre at Sabra, and various acts of assassination and looting. Many are construction contractors and almost all are millionaires with questionable sources for their wealth. Such leaders have no credibility whatsoever and openly and frequently travel to Damascus for "consultations" with their Syrian handlers.
     The impact of all this on the Lebanese economy has been disastrous in spite of the cushion of the income earned outside Lebanon by many Lebanese with foreign commercial activities, employment or other means. The standard of living of the average Lebanese family took a nose dive. More Lebanese children are underfed, underclothed and not receiving any education than at any time in modern Lebanese history. But human rights were far worse affected.

The Rule of Law in Eclipse
     To start with, a Lebanese equivalent to the Syrian special security courts had to be created. So the old established institution of the military court under the Ministry of Defense was given the task. Suddenly the calendar of that court swelled and its case load rose to over twenty thousand a year. Although the military court is supposed, in theory, to observe the rules of criminal procedure, it does not do so in practice. The military court is constituted mostly of military officers with no legal education or training. The system is dominated by the prosecutor who actually runs the administration of the court and to whom all clerks report. It takes minutes to try an average case and verdicts are passed later on in the day or in the evening with little or no role for lawyers to play in their defense. Torture prevails. Cases of special interest to the Syrians are handled by the Syrians and the detainees are, without hesitation, transferred to Syria for interrogation and internment without any Lebanese judicial intervention. In many cases the prisoners were actually apprehended by Lebanese security forces and delivered to the Syrians. In most such cases detentions simply turned into disappearances as the Syrians refused to account for the detainees or permit family visits to them.
     The judiciary also suffered. What remained of judicial independence rapidly disappeared. Syrian fingers became apparent in appointments of key prosecutors and investigating magistrates. When the third highest ranking judge who headed the Judicial Inspection Bureau brought disciplinary charges against two senior judges who hosted a lavish dinner in honor of Syriaıs defense minister financed by a well-known drug trafficker, the Beirut home of the ranking judge was surrounded by Syrian forces and Syrian officers attempted to take him by force for a summoned audience with the Beirut commander of the Syrian Moukhabarat. The two accused judges were subsequently tried by a disciplinary council and were cleared of the charges in a sharply divided vote. They were defended by a fellow judge who, almost immediately thereafter, became the next top prosecutor general of the country. The judge chief of the Judicial Inspection Bureau retired.

The Steady Erosion of Human Rights
     The next target was what remained of the freedom of expression. Before the Syrian Army formally advanced into Lebanon in 1976 (after it had long operated on Lebanese territory in the guise of a Palestinian guerilla organization, Al Saiqa), an unconstitutional law prohibited the publication of new newspapers, whether daily or weekly, unless two existing newspaper licenses were first purchased by the applicant and revoked. As this legislation did not apply to the electronic media, radio and television stations proliferated. Hence a new statute was enacted restricting television and radio stations but leaving in business those stations that are under the control of the "leaders", including a station that was hurriedly declared but is not in business to this date. One of the stations is owned by the prime minister. The banned stations were closed down by force. In the latest shutdown by force that took place in Tripoli a few weeks ago, two innocent lives were lost to security forces bullets.
     Goodbye to freedom of assembly and association. All demonstrations were banned in 1993 by decree of the cabinet. To form a non-governmental association requires a decree by the minister of the interior. No association is permitted with aims or by founders or members not agreeable to the government. The minister, who is also vice premier and a very wealthy construction contractor and real estate developer, is known for openly and vocally despising human rights. In a very recent statement, he proclaimed security more valuable than "the rights they speak about".
     Lawyers and the Bar Association are now targeted but in different ways. Individual lawyers are threatened with prosecution for acts that fall naturally within their function of defending their clients. Any criticism of the system is being declared as libelous and both the Beirut prosecutor and the countryıs general prosecutor have publicly warned that they will not tolerate such criticism. The Bar Association, which is self-governing and yields legal powers over the legal profession, is one of the remaining institutions which constitute a potential threat to the Syrian-installed Lebanese regime. Hence the government is interfering covertly in its annual meetings and the election of its council. Very recently the prime minister was invited to the bar where he presided over the ground-breaking ceremony for a lawyers club on public property to which he announced a contribution of $400,000. The bar is also the beneficiary of a special tax on all notarized and other official contracts equal to 1.5 per mill of the declared value thereof and collects a special tax on all powers of attorney. The independence of the bar has been seriously compromised in that it cannot risk a confrontation with the government that could cost it vital sources of income that count in the millions of dollars per annum.
     The corruption of the institutions of civil society is in full swing. The general federation of workers unions has been split into two competing leaderships with the resulting paralysis of the labor movement. One leadership is openly and directly loyal to the Syrians. The other is supported by politicians loyal to the Syrians.
     The situation with the illegal militias that all, and without exception, have a terrible human rights record, is very strange indeed. Officially, all militias were dissolved and their membership was absorbed into the army, the police and the civil service. The Speaker of the House, who is one of the top three "presidents", continues, however, to lead his own armed militia, Amal, under the pretext of waging war on Israel. Hizballah is another militia which has evolved into a large heavily armed private army under joint Syrian-Iranian control with its own jails and detainees. It is officially recognized by the government, and many Lebanese were charged before the military court with "spying" on Hizballah, and were tried, convicted and received prison sentences on such charges! Other militias which have been declared officially disarmed are ready to be back in business on the first signal from the big brothers. Hence the threat is openly and frequently made that if the Syrians are ever forced to withdraw from Lebanon all the militias will be instantly back on the streets. Sadly, maintaining the Syrian military occupation has become part of the declared programs of many politicians commissioned, or adopted, by the Syrians.

Corruption in High Places
     One of the Syrian tactics in Lebanon has been their wholesale adoption of the confessional system and the corrupt political bosses who were on the road to extinction. Hence repression has been allied with corruption. The appointment of Mr. Hariri as prime minister intensified mismanagement and the decline of integrity in government. Hariri descended on Beirut from Saudi Arabia where he received all his practical education and experience in life. He brought with him the Saudi culture of corruption, conflict of interest, waste of resources, and disregard for the rule of law. While Saudi Arabia could finance all those excesses from its vast oil income, Lebanon has no such income hence the growing public debt and the steep rise in tax collection. Hariri has not disassociated himself from his vast commercial interests and his companies are known to be actively competing with smaller Lebanese companies on all levels. In addition to the office of prime minister, he is minister of finance and of telecommunications. One of his many real estate projects, Solidere, was granted an unconstitutional and unconscionable concession on the old city of Beirut, ironically home to the Beirut Law School of ancient times. The rights of the original owners and tenants were confiscated with meager compensation in the form of Solidereıs own shares that can never be sold. A large police force was placed at the disposal of Solidereıs management to evict owners and residents by force. One old lady that I represented was taken by force to a police station while her house was being demolished. She fell ill instantly and in a few weeks she died. A dozen residents of an old house, men women and children, who were lax in obeying the eviction instructions died under the rubble when Solidereıs contractors proceeded, and without further warning, to demolish the house while the unlucky residenrts were still under its roof. Indeed, Beirut is no longer the mother of laws but the victim of gross abuse of rights.

An Arena for Foreign Powers
     The role of the US Government and its position on all that has been taking place is a mystery to most Lebanese. Many of them strongly feel that had it not been for the acquiescence of the American Government Mr. Assad would never have dared to do what he has done in Lebanon. The recent brief visit of the American Secretary of State to Beirut and its public remarks on the rule of law were very encouraging, though its implicit endorsement of the Hariri-led Syrian-controlled regime was disturbing. What is further disturbing is that the actions of American diplomacy portray continued unwarranted tolerance of the Syrian role in Lebanon and an inexplicable support for Syrian cronies such as Mr. Hariri, his cabinet and all what they stand for.
     As a result the Lebanese people have become helpless hostages to a tyranny controlled from outside their borders and dedicated to an endless struggle between three major regional powers, Syria, Iran and Israel. Each of these regional powers is much stronger militarily than Lebanon. Together, they have chosen to settle their scores on Lebanese land. From where I live in Beirut we have a good look of the town of Na'me about ten miles south of the city. In this town the Syrians have unlawfully sanctioned the establishment of a base for a Palestinian armed group, one of a score of such foreign armed groups they similarly sanction. Israeli planes unlawfully violate Lebanese air space on a regular basis to raid Na'me in plain view from our balcony. Both sides, the Israelis and the Syrians seem to be content with this "arrangement" and the political purposes of both governments are equally served. But I assure you the Lebanese residents of Na'me are not, and that the great majority of the Lebanese are not.
     One of the greatest ironies, if not farces, of modern diplomacy is what we have been told by reliable sources for the last few years, that the Israeli Government, before and after the assassination of Mr. Rabin and even under Mr. Netanyahu, repeatedly expressed serious interest in withdrawing from Lebanon. We are also told by the same sources that the Syrian Government has not been agreeable to such withdrawal, however unconditional, for fear of separating the "twin" negotiating tracks with Israel -- the Syrian-Lebanese! Most Lebanese believe the Syrian position to be motivated not only by the wish to maintain Lebanon as a bargaining chip, a hostage, in the endless negotiations-cum-confrontation with Israel, but also by its evident preference for maintaining the status quo. Lebanon is such a valuable prize, and an Israeli withdrawal may ring the bells for a Syrian withdrawal long overdue under the Taif terms. So far the Syrian position on the Taif mandated withdrawal is simple: it is willing to withdraw if and when it is so requested by the Lebanese Government. One of the ministers perhaps expressed the views of his loyalist colleagues in the Cabinet by publicly threatening to throw himself before the first Syrian tank that begins such withdrawal!
     This sad state of affairs calls for a stand by the Lebanese people. The Lebanese should demonstrate in every way, and primarily through utilizing what remains of the legal process, their will to resist the tyranny and to defend their human rights against all forms of abuse. But there is also a role to be played by the international community to make sure that the erosion in human rights in Lebanon is halted and ultimately reversed. Unquestionably, the resolve of the international community on this issue is vital to the success of the local defense.
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