Most of us know about the ruthless riots that occurred in Egypt in order for Hosni Mubarak to step down as Egypt’s leader. But, did you know that Syria–west of the Mediterranean Sea–has the worst human rights situation in the world? Syria is governed by a Republic in which only a handful of people control the government and establish laws—not quite a democracy but not quite a dictatorship either. Republics are designed to protect the rights of people under a set constitution and a series of laws; however, this is not the case in Syria.
Bashar al-Assad, president of the Syrian Arab Republic and Regional Secretary of the Ba’ath Party, has ruled for over ten years and in those ten years has enforced what is known as “emergency laws” on the Syrian people. One of the most oppressive laws in Syria is the one that blocks the people from websites sites such as Wikipedia, Youtube, Facebook and Amazon. Also, every comment a computer user posts on chat forums must be recorded and checked by Assad personally; which is ironic seeing how Bashar al-Assad’s first public role in the Republic was to lead the Syrian Computer Society, which brought the Internet to Syria in 2001.
However, Assad is not responsible for this law; in fact media censorship was established by Bashar al-Assad’s father, Hafez al-Assad, in 1963 in order to raise popularity with the Ba’ath Party, before Assad was even born (originally the Ba’ath Party was formed in 1947 designed to stop Western Imperialism and advocated for, unity, liberty, and socialism). The problem now is that Assad is not uplifting the oppressive laws his father set in place. The right to demonstrate and freedom of speech are constitutional laws (along with 38 more) that have been frozen and practically erased out of the Syrian government.
After the protesting in Egypt and Tunisia, Assad expected Syria to avoid participating in the Arab “revolutions” but on March 16th 2011 Syrian protesters started to rally up in the southern city Daraa chanting, “God, Syria, Freedom”. Thirty-seven of these protesters were killed allegedly by security forces. On March 25th, over 1,000 rioters were shot and killed by the Syrian troops. The situation in Syria has gotten so out of hand that the Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, demanded Assad to stop the killing in Syria and to start the reform movement that will uplift these “emergency laws”.
Unlike the chaos in Egypt, Syrians don’t wish to have another leader in power; the people of Syria are quite happy with the regime of Assad because he has kept the price of living at an affordable amount for everyone, the education system is improving and offered to both genders and previously, before the protesting, it was a crime-free country. All the Syrian people ask for is more freedom so they can fully enjoy their beautiful country, but unfortunately no changes have occurred yet according to the Human Rights Group, hopefully this bloodshed will not end in vain.