Hriscanka prica o patnjama u Esedovom zatvoru....

[Mono]

Hriscanka prica o patnjama u Esedovom zatvoru....

Young Activist Hadeel Kouky Describes Her Arrest in Syira

Published December 12, 2011 | By Ahed Al Hendi

[email=?subject=Young%20Activist%20Hadeel%20Kouky%20Describes%20Her%20Arrest%20in%20Syira&body=Young%20Activist%20Hadeel%20Kouky%20Describes%20Her%20Arrest%20in%20Syira%20-%20http://ahedalhendi.com/?p=97][/email]

Translated By

Ahed Al Hendi

Young Syrian activist Hadeel Kouky was jailed three times for writing a note on her Facebook wall. Below she poetically describes her arrest and stance toward the revolution as a member of the Christian minority. Though the regime claims it protects Christians, Kouky sees it differently:

We are all partners in our country. Our enemy is the same enemy. It’s they who kill our compatriots.

My name is Hadil and I am from the Syrian city of Hasaka.

I have not yet reached the age of 20. However, I was kidnapped and arrested by Assad’s intelligence services thee times. The first time was on March 10th, due to my involvement with some friends distributing secret publications that call simply for “reform.”

Reform is the same word that the regime drilled into our brains by speaking about it for the last ten months, yet we have not seen anything come from it. Now the regime hopes that the people will ask him [Assad] for reform instead of ousting or executing him.

I was jailed another two times for different reasons.

After my third arrest, I was tortured in such a brutal way that I still feel the affects today.

• I was hauled into the street of my hometown and beaten by the thugs because I participated in a peaceful demonstration that called for freedom.
  
• I am a student in two universities in Aleppo. I study law and English literature, so I am not a member of any armed gang.
  
• I am not a Salafist , nor a member of the Muslim brotherhood. So this “great,” “secular” regime should not fear the Islamic extremist running through my veins that would distort freedom and socialist Baathism.
  
• I am a Christian, a member of the ” minority” that the regime proclaims is protected by it. The regime tortured me just like other prisoners, regardless of their age, gender, or sect.
  
• We are the minority who fear the Salafists!!!
  

For god’s sake, I am asking you. You, the regime’s supporters. Tell me, from now on, why would a girl like me fear an extremist Muslim ?

• Muslims never arrested me and never killed or tortured my people.
  
• They never made me a wanderer or forced me to immigrate to a faraway and cold state. However, the regime did. This criminal institution includes people from all sects and the only thing that brought them together is their murderous nature.
  
• The regime, which protects the minority, committed the following:
  
• Forced me, as the oldest daughter, to be faraway from my mother’s lap. Far away from my father and siblings.
  
• Far away from Jasmine, Jamal, Ruba and all of my friends that I adore.
  
• They banned me from going back to school, from Syria, and from all of my dreams and ambitions.
  

Who should I trust, and who should I take refuge with?

I will only trust the revolutionaries in my country, and I will not respect any one else but them. “The free Syrians”, God’s men on the earth. Those who are giving their lives every day, so I can go back to my mother’s lap and to my beloved ones.

They are those that are giving their lives, so that every arrested and exiled person will get back home.

So the tears of the mothers’ of the martyrs will dry.

So Syria will return for these oppressed people, whatever their affiliations or extremism.

I don’t fear them. I trust them and I trust their courage and faith.

The only thing that I don’t trust in this universe is the regime that destroyed my life. It is the regime’s fault that many of my relatives were upset with me, because it was able to fool them with the biggest lie of protecting the minorities. A lie which is shameful to believe in.

My soul is almost leaving my body lamenting the city of Homs. My heart is with you, I am so embarrassed of my fear, compared to your courage.

I will hold the revolution in my heart where ever I go. I will be very extremist in loving it. I will stay with it where ever it will take me.

http://ahedalhendi.com/?p=97

[Mono]

Syrian Christian Activist Hadeel Kouky Opposes More Than the Syrian Regime

4 May 2012

Miss Hadeel Kouky as seen here in a photo posted on the popular social networking site Facebook; The logo on the bottom right reads "Strike of Dignity" in reference to the uprising in Syria that the young democracy activist supports. Critics of the opposition point to the fact that the so-called Syrian revolution had a logo and Facebook page long before there were major street protests, suggesting outside agitation by US backed islamist opposition groups based in London.

Syrian Christian Activist Hadeel Kouky Opposes More Than the Syrian Regime

by Christina Haddad

BEIRUT, Lebanon (MECN) – For many months, a young Syrian Christian woman, just 20 years of age, has been speaking candidly about the situation in her country and her personal experience opposing the government of Syria as a democracy activist. As early as March 2011, when anti-government activity was hardly measurable and could hardly be called a protest movement let alone a popular revolution, a student named Hadeel Kouky (also written Kouki; Arabic: هديل كوكي) was already active distributing flyers about democracy and the government was quick to take notice.

Shortly thereafter, the young Christian woman was arrested along with her friends and detained for a period of 40 days. In prison, she was interrogated about her anti-government activities, a process which included the administration of electric shocks and other harsh treatment. After her release, she returned to her activities as a democracy advocate, at which point she had discovered that cities like Deraa and Homs had begun to defy the government. With her continued defiance, Kouky had to face the authorities a number of times until she realized it would be safer and wiser for her to flee the country, especially after they prevented her from returning to her studies at university where she had been active in organizing and participating in anti-government protests.

In a tale that sounds as if it were taken out of the pages of Lawrence of Arabia, Kouky sought the help of bedouin nomads to smuggle her out of the country, and eventually met up with men under arms who smuggled her to Turkish controlled territory. Kouky later traveled on to Egypt where she continued to speak openly about her anti-government views and exposed the government for the brutal way she was treated. In her own words, she says she was “abused in prison for just expressing a thought.” In a society that has been ruled by an authoritarian regime, and in a predominantly Arabic and Islamic society where respecting elders, not opposing the views of your host in their home, avoiding religious or political discussions, stopping short of expressing what others might consider blasphemy, and other cultural norms that place greater value on social acceptance than individual expression, her open calls for democracy as a young Christian woman of all people are entirely out-of-place within the local cultural context. This does not excuse the brutality of the government in its response to her acts of expression, but it does earn the young Christian female student extra merit for the many taboos that she broke simultaneously.

The expatriation of the young activist did not bring an end to either her vocal opposition to the Syrian government nor to her persecution. Kouky’s ordeal continued in exile in Egypt where sympathizers of the Syrian government found her, threatened her, and physically assaulted her. Why? Because she would not silence her voice and as she claims “the government is especially critical of Syrian Christians since their vocal opposition erodes the legitimacy of the government’s claim to be the guardians of a secular Syria” that permits every religious community to live securely and practice their faiths freely. The importance of a Christian is that minorities in Syria have not always had this luxury, not least of whom are the Alawites, an offshoot of Shia Islam, who were severely mistreated and persecuted for centuries under Ottoman Turkish and Sunni Muslim majority rule. Many argue that the persecution that the Alawites faced is in part responsible for breeding the harsh behavior of the ruling Alawite clans who run the country, including the family of President Bashar Al-Asad. The proponents of this theory suggest that indeed every action has a reaction, and that without a cultural value system that fully embraces human equality, a country like Syria, much like other Arab and Islamic societies, can never have a liberal democracy in which men and women, people of any religion, race, sect, tribe or age, can be guaranteed equal rights before the law, human rights, and civil rights.

While Kouky is defying the government with her notions of democracy, the question remains whether or not the vast majority of others with whom she has been protesting would embrace all of her democratic ideals as a woman, as a Christian, and as a young person. Democracy by itself literally means rule by the people, so what people believe is what eventually becomes law. There is little evidence that Kouky’s perspective is the dominant perspective in Syrian society, and the examples of Iraq, Egypt, Libya and Tunisia suggest just the opposite. While Kouky has tremendous street credentials among anti-regime opposition groups for being active from the very beginning, for being Christian, and for being a woman, there is nothing to suggest that the Islamist dominated Syrian National Council would enshrine equal rights for all into the law if they assumed power. Many suspect that liberal-minded individuals like Kouky, just as in the case with Egypt and elsewhere, offer the perfect cover for anti-government opposition movements that hope for, and who have succeeded in, creating Islamic states across the region. History supports this perspective with several well-known examples.

In 1979, the revolution that opposed the U.S. backed Shah of Iran as a bulwark against further Soviet expansion was originally a socialist-communist revolution, not an islamic revolution by any means. The Ayatollah Khomeini was in France at the time and, as many Iranians say, was hardly known to them inside Iran except among radical Islamist circles. Khomeini was not a popular leader in exile, but was allowed by the French authorities, and encouraged with U.S. support, to return to Iran to take over the revolution and stop a socialist-communist takeover. Islamists were also used by the coalition that opposed the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan that same year, including the involvement of the CIA in the arming, training and supporting of Osama bin Laden who was duly labeled a “freedom fighter” while known locally and regionally as a “mujahid”, or holy warrior. The term mujahid — from which the plural mujahideen is derived — is of the same word origin as jihad and literally means someone who fights jihad, an islamic concept in which muslims wage holy war for islam.

The United States and its allies have consistently supported killers, including islamic extremists who themselves hate the United States and who consider it the “Great Satan”, to fight the Russians in particular in the oil rich regions of the middle east and its immediate periphery. The military support, including advanced armaments, provided to Turkey, Iran under the Shah, and Pakistan is not an accident but part of a strategy known during the cold war as “the Northern Frontier” or “the Islamic Belt”. Muslim extremists have been supported not because they are peaceful allies of the United States, but because they are willing to kill perceived enemies or rivals of the United States and its economic and political interests. What better than islamic extremists to fight the atheist (and thus Godless) Soviet Union, or Sunni muslim extremists like the Muslim Brotherhood and Al-Qaeda to fight their nemesis, the Shia — and therefore heretical muslims — of Iran.

The series of short-term tactics that the United States has employed to limit Soviet and Russian expansion and influence in the energy rich region of the middle east has back fired and has caused the United States to enter the region through direct military interventions that are bankrupting it. Osama bin Laden, the once celebrated “freedom fighter” became an enemy after 9/11. The reality is that he was never a friend of the United States and openly opposed the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia. Iraq’s Saddam Hussein is another example of a temporary ally who was used to contain the power of an Islamic Iran from spreading its ideology among the Shia to the energy rich Gulf states to the west of Iran. When Iraq later decided to invade Kuwait, the U.S. decided to counter it with two wars against Iraq in 1991 and 2003 to protect oil interests and maintain the political and strategic status quo. A young idealist like Hadeel Kouky was not even born when many of these events took place and was too young to even understand the more recent events; in 2003, she was only 11 or 12 years old. Kouky disclaims any notion that she does understand the big picture in public statements in which she identifies herself as “simply a [young] Syrian, Christian, girl, not a politician.”

The United States is now siding with Islamists across North Africa and the Middle East in order to eliminate the Shia muslims from power in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, while

Hadeel Kouky after being badly beaten by a group of sympathizers of the Syrian government in Egypt, some reportedly who spoke with Egyptian accents

preventing the democratic rights of Shia in other places like Bahrain, Kuwait, Yemen and the eastern provinces of Saudi Arabia. The allies supporting the Syrian opposition could not care less about Hadeel Kouky, Syrian Christians, or any of the people in Syria on either side, otherwise they would not engage in such sinister policies to foment war. So, who does this young idealist Christian woman believe she is appealing to exactly for help? Who does she think really cares for her as a woman, a Christian, a Syrian, or as a human being for that matter? She defied her family and others closest to her who criticized her and even blame her for ruining her own life. Some observers have called her “stupid” for she knew the nature of the regime she was opposing yet she knowingly destroyed her own life for the sake of a democratic ideal that her fellow countrymen have never known because it is not part of their cultural and religious value system. It sounds a bit like blaming the victim, but this is another cultural value that is rampant in Arab and Muslim majority societies like Syria, especially directed toward women who are the victims of abuse, victims of rape, victims of honor crimes, or who want to divorce their husbands for whatever reasons they may have. The honor of men is the burden of women, but these male dominated societies have not treated women honorably during their times of greatest need, in part to further protect the honor of men who dishonor women.

Hadeel Kouky’s revolution is so much greater, so much larger, so much more noble than the Syrian revolution or Arab Spring, but even she does not yet see it because she is young, naive and blinded by the passion of her protest and the camaraderie of her friends who are engaged in their own revolutions. When the current government in Syria changes by whatever means and when her friends stop protesting, the real revolution that Hadeel Kouky started will have just begun. It is the revolution in which women are equal to men, which necessitates an examination of religious precepts, the role of religion in society and its influence over thought and culture, and the values of secularism. It is the revolution in which Christians are equal to muslims, requiring an examination of the discrimination written into Islamic religious texts which can never be edited out but will have to be foregone for any non-muslim to have equal rights in a muslim majority society. It is the revolution in which individual achievement allows for equal access and equal opportunity, which requires the destruction of tribalism, nepotism, cronyism, ageism, and corruption. It is the revolution in which an entire people embrace these values, which requires strengthening national identity around these values across all of Syria.

Hadeel Kouky’s revolution is the same revolution of every Syrian Christian philosopher and political activist before her and which gave birth to every one of Syria’s most popular political parties – that is, except for the Muslim Brotherhood which today represents the U.S. backed agenda to commit genocide against the Shia to protect U.S. political and economic interests in the energy rich region of the middle east. Hadeel Kouky’s revolution is the one in which Maronite Christians eventually determined that there was a brighter future awaiting Syrian Christians of Mount Lebanon and advocated for an independent state, today’s Republic of Lebanon. Hadeel Kouky’s revolution is the one being fought by the Christians of Iraq who now hope to create a protectorate of their own within a sovereign Iraq rather than try to convince Arabs and Muslims of ideals that are against their entrenched belief systems before it is too late and Christians disappear from Iraq at the hands of extremists. Hadeel Kouky’s revolution is the one that the entire world should put every effort into supporting, but will always end in failure because the source of ideas that she is fighting has the exclusive immunity only afforded to religion.

The people who Hadeel does not fear today tolerate her for opposing their enemy, but tomorrow Hadeel Kouky will be their number one enemy and she will realize that being tolerated is vastly different from being celebrated. The young idealist will then come to understand what the April 6th movement in Egypt learned, what the Iranian student revolutionaries learned, what the Christians of Iraq learned, and what everyone before her has learned - those who support liberal democracy will have to defeat or contain Islam to be equal in an Arab and Muslim society and in order for human rights, civil rights and equal rights that characterize a liberal democracy to flourish. If opposition forces succeed in defeating the current authoritarian Syrian regime, they may succeed in creating democracy –as in rule by the people–but majority rule will not bring a liberal democracy to Syria unless Arab tribalism and Islamic supremacism as frameworks for society, culture and politics are also defeated. If Islamists come to power, there may be no second chances and it could spell the beginning of the end of Christianity in Syria. Significantly, the world’s only superpower is siding with Islamists against what both the U.S. and liberal democracy advocates perceive is their common enemy today – the Syrian government – which means that this unholy alliance of opponents of the Syrian government will empower an even greater enemy to liberal democracy that will be much harder to defeat later for the sake of a short term goal.

The entire world should support the revolution that is symbolized by Hadeel Kouky, but if history repeats itself, the young Christian Syrian woman will be sold to her enemies for pieces of silver just like all those who died before her in pursuit of the same Christian ideals. Hadeel Kouky will bear the weight of her own cross for the rest of her life and live and die as a martyr to the Syrian Christian ideals of love, peace and harmony for all mankind, best articulated by the very first Syrian Christian – Jesus of Nazareth.

What do you think? Was this young activist duped into serving a foreign backed agenda that does not serve her best interest or her democratic ideals? Or, do you believe that the Syrian people will embrace a liberal democracy with human rights, civil rights, and equal rights for all if they overthrow the Syrian government? Please share your comments below and write to us if you would like to hear more on this story.

Learn more about Hadeel Kouky from her own words:

Video of Hadeel Kouky speaking to the commemoration of the disbanding of the Lebanese Forces (Arabic with subtitles):

Video of Hadeel Kouky speaking before the United Nations 4th Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy about her personal views and experience as an anti-government opposition activist:

[bosanac]

Sirijska vlast je vlast koja zalužuje brisanje sa lica zemlje.Okrutnost, ubijanja, nepravda, nevjerstvo, to je njihovo obilježje.

Dok sam išao u trgovinu u Sirju upoznao sam momka koji radi izuzetno teške poslove za platu od 15 evra mjesečno.

Beššar Esed je sin zločinca koji je spalio grad Hamu.A plod ne pada daleko od stabla.

[Ромејац]

Сећате ли се оне "јаднице" из Кувајта која је на америчким тв каналима причала своју причу како су ирачки војници (за време окупације Кувајта од стране Ирака 1990 године), били сурови и шта су све радили народу, женама деци...

Па се после сазнало да је то кћерка неког кувајтског дипломате која није ни била у Кувајту у време окупације и која је прошла обуку како да одглуми паћеницу из окупације. А њена прича је искоришћена као добра пропагандна подлога за рат.

[Mono]

Video of Hadeel Kouky speaking to the commemoration of the disbanding of the Lebanese Forces (Arabic with English subtitles):

[Ignjatije]

Sirijska vlast je vlast koja zalužuje brisanje sa lica zemlje.Okrutnost, ubijanja, nepravda, nevjerstvo, to je njihovo obilježje.

Dok sam išao u trgovinu u Sirju upoznao sam momka koji radi izuzetno teške poslove za platu od 15 evra mjesečno.

Beššar Esed je sin zločinca koji je spalio grad Hamu.A plod ne pada daleko od stabla.

Sad će dobiju demokratiju kao i mi.

[Mono]

Сећате ли се оне "јаднице" из Кувајта која је на америчким тв каналима причала своју причу како су ирачки војници (за време окупације Кувајта од стране Ирака 1990 године), били сурови и шта су све радили народу, женама деци...

Па се после сазнало да је то кћерка неког кувајтског дипломате која није ни била у Кувајту у време окупације и која је прошла обуку како да одглуми паћеницу из окупације. А њена прича је искоришћена као добра пропагандна подлога за рат.

Sa tim da ovde postoje hiljade video snimaka i hiljade svedoka...Diktatorski rezim u Siriji vlada preko 40 godina...

Iracke obavestajne sluzbe su svasta radile i svom narodu...Kuvajt je nekada bio Iracka provincija...

[Mono]

[Ромејац]

Sa tim da ovde postoje hiljade video snimaka i hiljade svedoka...Diktatorski rezim u Siriji vlada preko 40 godina...

Iracke obavestajne sluzbe su svasta radile i svom narodu...Kuvajt je nekada bio Iracka provincija...

И тада је било мноштво снимака и мноштво сведока. А снимак о коме говорим је искоришћен за пропаганду да је рат преко потребан и неопходан.

Не знам да ли је истина што ова хришћанка говори (знам да под Асадовим режимом народ тешко пати), али је очигледно да се њене речи (било да су истините или лажне) користе у сврху оправдавања будућег рата против Сирије и окупације исте.

Зар је ово први пут да злоупотребљавају овакве приче када желе да покрену рат?

[Grizzly Adams]

Не дај Боже да подцењујем страдање тог несрећног народа, али ово заиста личи на пропаганду...

[obi-wan]

И тада је било мноштво снимака и мноштво сведока. А снимак о коме говорим је искоришћен за пропаганду да је рат преко потребан и неопходан.

Не знам да ли је истина што ова хришћанка говори (знам да под Асадовим режимом народ тешко пати), али је очигледно да се њене речи (било да су истините или лажне) користе у сврху оправдавања будућег рата против Сирије и окупације исте.

Зар је ово први пут да злоупотребљавају овакве приче када желе да покрену рат?

Ma de bi brate oni isli u propagandu, sta ti pada na paaameeeet... :rolleyes: 0205_whistling

[Crveni Baron]

A sta ono rade ameri u Guantanamu ....?

Kako se ono zvase ... waterboarding ... nova tehnika umivanja ....

Sta ti je sloboda i demokratija ... milina ....

[Иван Недић]

А кака љепотица, нек се уда ође код нас кад је већ ришћанка, да не страда више

[nirvanashop]

aman, ljudi, Sirija je jedina STVARNO sekularna zemlja sa muslimanskom vecinom i jedina muslimanska zemlja u kojoj su hriscani potpuno ravnopravni. Jedini koji bi tamo mogli da se bune su sunitski ekstremisti i to zbog navodnog alavitskog ugnjetavanja. Ne mogu da verujem da se ljudi jos loze na ovako prizemnu propagandu.

[о.Небојша]

Што не причају о људским правима у Саудијској Арабији, о положају хришћана у Пакистану ?

Ово је покушај да се истисне Русија из Сирије, а тиме и из Средоземља.

Тешко оном народу коме Амери уводе демократију.

Нешто слично кад су Европљани колинизирали народе широм света, правдајући своју пљачку и насиља ширењем културе.