DAMSYIK – Anggota penyelamat Syria menggeledah sebuah penjara yang sinonim dengan kekejaman terburuk pemerintahan presiden terguling Bashar Assad, ketika orang ramai di ibu negara berpusu-pusu ke dataran tengah pada Isnin untuk meraikan kebebasan negara mereka.
Assad melarikan diri dari Syria ketika militan masuk ke ibu negara, membawa kepada penghujung yang menakjubkan pada Ahad lima dekad pemerintahan kejam oleh klannya ke atas sebuah negara yang dilanda perang paling maut pada abad ini.
Dia menyelia tindakan keras terhadap gerakan demokrasi yang tercetus pada 2011, mencetuskan perang yang membunuh 500,000 orang dan memaksa separuh negara meninggalkan rumah mereka.
Inti sistem pemerintahan yang Assad warisi daripada bapanya Hafez adalah kompleks penjara dan pusat tahanan yang kejam yang digunakan untuk menghapuskan perbezaan pendapat dengan memenjarakan mereka disyaki keluar daripada barisan parti pemerintah Baath.
Pada Isnin, penyelamat dari Syrian White Helmets berkata mereka mencari pintu rahsia atau ruang bawah tanah di penjara Saydnaya, mencari mana-mana tahanan yang mungkin terperangkap.
“Kami sedang berusaha dengan sepenuh tenaga untuk mencapai harapan baharu, dan kami mesti bersedia menghadapi yang terburuk,” kata organisasi itu dalam satu kenyataan.
Aida Taha, berusia 65 tahun, berkata dia “bersiar-siar di jalanan seperti orang gila” untuk mencari abangnya, yang ditahan pada 2012.
Dia berkata dia pergi ke Saydnaya, di mana dia percaya beberapa banduan masih berada di bawah tanah.
“Penjara itu mempunyai tiga atau empat tingkat bawah tanah,” kata Taha.
“Mereka mengatakan bahawa pintu tidak akan terbuka kerana mereka tidak mempunyai kod yang betul.”
“Kami sudah cukup lama ditindas, kami mahu anak-anak kami kembali,” tambahnya.
Walaupun Syria telah berperang selama 13 tahun, kejatuhan kerajaan akhirnya berlaku dalam beberapa hari, dengan serangan kilat dilancarkan oleh Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS).
Berakar dari cabang Al-Qaeda di Syria, HTS dilarang oleh kerajaan Barat sebagai kumpulan pengganas.
Walaupun masih belum dapat dilihat bagaimana HTS beroperasi sekarang setelah Assad telah tiada, ia telah berusaha untuk menyederhanakan imejnya dan untuk memastikan ramai minoriti agama Syria bahawa mereka tidak perlu takut.
Di tengah-tengah Damsyik pada Isnin, di sebalik semua ketidakpastian untuk masa depan, kegembiraan itu dapat dirasai.
“Ia tidak dapat digambarkan, kami tidak pernah menyangka mimpi ngeri ini akan berakhir, kami dilahirkan semula,” Rim Ramadan, 49 tahun, seorang penjawat awam di kementerian kewangan, memberitahu AFP.
“Kami takut selama 55 tahun bercakap, walaupun di rumah, kami pernah mengatakan dinding ada telinga,” kata Ramadan, ketika orang ramai membunyikan hon kereta mereka dan pemberontak melepaskan senjata mereka ke udara.
“Kami rasa kami hidup dalam mimpi,” tambahnya.
Semasa serangan dilancarkan pada 27 November, pemberontak merampas bandar demi bandar daripada kawalan Assad, membuka pintu penjara di sepanjang jalan dan membebaskan beribu-ribu orang, kebanyakan mereka ditahan atas tuduhan politik.
Kumpulan media sosial turun dengan rakyat Syria berkongsi imej tahanan yang dilaporkan dibawa keluar dari penjara bawah tanah, dalam usaha kolektif untuk menyatukan semula keluarga dengan orang tersayang mereka, beberapa daripada mereka telah hilang selama bertahun-tahun.
Yang lain, seperti Fadwa Mahmoud, yang suami dan anak lelakinya hilang, menghantar panggilan untuk mendapatkan bantuan mencari saudara mereka yang hilang.
“Di mana kamu, Maher dan Abdel Aziz, sudah tiba masanya untuk saya mendengar berita anda, oh Tuhan, tolonglah kembali, biarkan kegembiraan saya menjadi lengkap,” tulis Fadwa, dirinya bekas tahanan.
Presiden AS Joe Biden berkata Assad harus “bertanggungjawab” ketika dia menyebut kejatuhannya sebagai “peluang bersejarah” untuk rakyat Syria.
“Kejatuhan rejim adalah tindakan asas keadilan,” katanya.
Tetapi dia juga mengingatkan bahawa kumpulan Islamis garis keras dalam pakatan pemberontak yang menang akan menghadapi penelitian.
“Beberapa kumpulan pemberontak yang menumbangkan Assad mempunyai rekod keganasan dan pencabulan hak asasi manusia mereka sendiri,” kata Biden.
Amerika Syarikat (AS) telah mengambil perhatian terhadap kenyataan baru-baru ini oleh pemberontak yang mencadangkan mereka mengamalkan postur lebih sederhana, tetapi Biden berkata: “Kami akan menilai bukan sahaja kata-kata mereka, tetapi tindakan mereka.”
Amnesty International juga menggesa pelaku pencabulan hak untuk menghadapi keadilan, dengan ketuanya Agnes Callamard menggesa pasukan menggulingkan Assad untuk “melepaskan diri daripada keganasan masa lalu.”
“Sebarang peralihan politik mesti memastikan akauntabiliti bagi pelaku pelanggaran serius dan menjamin bahawa mereka yang bertanggungjawab dipertanggungjawabkan,” kata ketua hak PBB Volker Turk pada Isnin.
Bagaimana Assad mungkin menghadapi keadilan masih tidak jelas, terutama selepas Rusia enggan pada Isnin untuk mengesahkan laporan oleh agensi berita Rusia bahawa dia telah melarikan diri ke Moscow.
Kedutaan Syria di Moscow menaikkan bendera pembangkang, dan Kremlin berkata ia akan membincangkan status pangkalannya di Syria dengan pihak berkuasa baharu.
Rusia memainkan peranan penting dalam mengekalkan kuasa Assad, campur tangan secara langsung dalam perang bermula pada 2015 dan menyediakan perlindungan udara kepada tentera di darat ketika ia berusaha untuk menumpaskan pemberontakan.
Iran, satu lagi sekutu utama Assad, berkata ia menjangkakan hubungan “mesra” dengan Syria akan diteruskan, dengan menteri luarnya berkata presiden yang digulingkan itu “tidak pernah meminta” bantuan Tehran menentang serangan militan.
Turkiye, dari segi sejarah penyokong pembangkang, menyeru kerajaan baharu yang “inklusif” di Syria, ketika situasi yang tidak dapat diramalkan mula mereda.
“Ia bukan hanya rejim Assad yang jatuh, ia juga persoalan tentang apa yang menggantikannya?” kata Aron Lund, pakar di badan pemikir Century International.
Walaupun perang Syria bermula dengan tindakan keras terhadap protes demokrasi akar umbi, ia berubah dari semasa ke semasa dan menarik kumpulan jihad dan kuasa asing yang menyokong pihak lawan.
Israel, yang bersempadan dengan Syria, menghantar tentera ke zon penampan selepas kejatuhan Assad, dalam apa yang digambarkan oleh Menteri Luar Gideon Saar sebagai “langkah terhad dan sementara.”
Saar juga berkata negaranya telah menyerang “senjata kimia” di Syria, “agar ia tidak jatuh ke tangan pelampau.”
Di utara Syria, serangan dron Turki di kawasan yang dikuasai Kurdish membunuh 11 orang awam, enam daripadanya kanak-kanak, menurut pemantau perang Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
AN-AFP, 9 Dis 2024
Syrians search for loved ones missing in Assad’s jails
DAMASCUS — Syrian rescuers searched a jail synonymous with the worst atrocities of ousted president Bashar Assad’s rule, as people in the capital flocked to a central square Monday to celebrate their country’s freedom.
Assad fled Syria as militants swept into the capital, bringing to a spectacular end on Sunday five decades of brutal rule by his clan over a country ravaged by one of the deadliest wars of the century.
He oversaw a crackdown on a democracy movement that erupted in 2011, sparking a war that killed 500,000 people and forced half the country to flee their homes.
At the core of the system of rule that Assad inherited from his father Hafez was a brutal complex of prisons and detention centers used to eliminate dissent by jailing those suspected of stepping out of the ruling Baath party’s line.
On Monday, rescuers from the Syrian White Helmets said they were searching for secret doors or basements in Saydnaya prison, looking for any detainees who might be trapped.
“We are working with all our energy to reach a new hope, and we must be prepared for the worst,” the organization said in a statement.
Aida Taha, aged 65, said she had been “roaming the streets like a madwoman” in search of her brother, who was arrested in 2012.
She said she went to Saydnaya, where she believes some prisoners are still underground.
“The prison has three or four underground floors,” Taha said.
“They say that the doors won’t open because they don’t have the proper codes.”
“We’ve been oppressed long enough, we want our children back,” she added.
While Syria has been at war for 13 years, the government’s collapse ended up coming in a matter of days, with a lightning offensive launched by Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS).
Rooted in Syria’s branch of Al-Qaeda, HTS is proscribed by Western governments as a terrorist group.
While it remains to be seen how HTS operates now that Assad is gone, it has sought to moderate its image and to assure Syria’s many religious minorities that they need not fear.
In central Damascus on Monday, despite all the uncertainties for the future, the joy was palpable.
“It’s indescribable, we never thought this nightmare would end, we are reborn,” 49-year-old Rim Ramadan, a civil servant at the finance ministry, told AFP.
“We were afraid for 55 years of speaking, even at home, we used to say the walls had ears,” Ramadan said, as people honked their car horns and rebels fired their guns into the air.
“We feel like we’re living a dream,” she added.
During the offensive launched on November 27, rebels wrested city after city from Assad’s control, opening the gates of prisons along the way and freeing thousands of people, many of them held on political charges.
Social media groups were alight with Syrians sharing images of detainees reportedly brought out from the dungeons, in a collective effort to reunite families with their loved ones, some of whom had been missing for years.
Others, like Fadwa Mahmoud, whose husband and son are missing, posted calls for help finding their missing relatives.
“Where are you, Maher and Abdel Aziz, it’s time for me to hear your news, oh God, please come back, let my joy become complete,” wrote Mahmoud, herself a former detainee.
US President Joe Biden said Assad should be “held accountable” as he called his downfall “a historic opportunity” for the people of Syria.
“The fall of the regime is a fundamental act of justice,” he said.
But he also cautioned that hard-line Islamist groups within the victorious rebel alliance would face scrutiny.
“Some of the rebel groups that took down Assad have their own grim record of terrorism and human right abuses,” Biden said.
The United States has taken note of recent statements by the rebels suggesting they were adopting a more moderate posture, but Biden said: “We will assess not just their words, but their actions.”
Amnesty International also called for perpetrators of rights violations to face justice, with its chief Agnes Callamard urging the forces that ousted Assad to “break free from the violence of the past.”
“Any political transition must ensure accountability for perpetrators of serious violations and guarantee that those responsible are held to account,” UN rights chief Volker Turk said on Monday.
How Assad might face justice remains unclear, especially after Russia refused on Monday to confirm reports by Russian news agencies that he had fled to Moscow.
The Syrian embassy in Moscow raised the flag of the opposition, and the Kremlin said it would discuss the status of its bases in Syria with the new authorities.
Russia played an instrumental role in keeping Assad in power, directly intervening in the war starting in 2015 and providing air cover to the army on the ground as it sought to crush the rebellion.
Iran, another key ally of Assad, said it expected its “friendly” ties with Syria to continue, with its foreign minister saying the ousted president “never asked” for Tehran’s help against the militant offensive.
Turkiye, historically a backer of the opposition, called for an “inclusive” new government in Syria, as the sheer unpredictability of the situation began to settle in.
“It is not just Assad’s regime falling, it is also the question of what comes in its place?” said Aron Lund, a specialist at the Century International think tank.
While Syria’s war began with a crackdown on grassroots democracy protests, it morphed over time and drew in jihadists and foreign powers backing opposing sides.
Israel, which borders Syria, sent troops into a buffer zone after Assad’s fall, in what Foreign Minister Gideon Saar described as a “limited and temporary step.”
Saar also said his country had struck “chemical weapons” in Syria, “in order that they will not fall in the hands of extremists.”
In northern Syria, a Turkish drone strike on a Kurdish-held area killed 11 civilians, six of them children, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor.
AN-AFP, Dec 9, 2024