Syria Deeply Weekly Update: In War-Torn Syria, Women Emerge as Changemakers

WEEKLY UPDATE
May 21, 2016
Dear Readers,Welcome to the weekly Syria Deeply newsletter. We’ve rounded up the most important stories and developments about Syria and the Syrians in order to bring you valuable news and analysis. But first, here is a brief overview of what happened this week:In Syria this week, the government continued to pound rebel-held areas as world powers met in Vienna to discuss increasing aid deliveries to besieged areas in the hopes of reviving the now defunct cease-fire and eventually coaxing warring parties back to the negotiating table.In Homs on Wednesday, a barrage of airstrikes on the rebel-held town of Rastan killed an extended family of 12, including 10 children, who had been hiding in a shelter underground.Government forces, with the help of Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia, on Thursday successfully captured the strategic rebel stronghold of Deir al-Asafir in Eastern Ghouta. Government troops have made strategic advances in the area on the northeastern outskirts of the capital in recent weeks, exploiting weeks of infighting between the area’s two rival Islamist factions – Jaish al-Islam and Failaq al-Rahman – to make gains.Southwest of Damascus, the Syrian army and its allies pressed forward on an assault to shore up control of the main highway running from Damascus to southwestern Syria. Government warplanes carried out dozens of air raids on the town of Khan al-Shih, where rebel groups straddle the strategic highway.As fighting raged across much of the country and ISIS took part in a separate series of battles against Kurdish forces and the U.S.-led air campaign, world powers gathered in Vienna in efforts to salvage the now-collapsed truce and bring warring parties back to the negotiating table.Although Tuesday’s meeting in Vienna failed to secure its intended goal of setting a date for a new round of peace talks, it did produce a joint statement pushing the U.N. World Food Program to airdrop much-needed humanitarian aid in besieged areas across the country, starting June 1, if forces loyal to Bashar al-Assad continue to block efforts to reach these areas.Shortly after the ultimatum, a 29-truck convoy entered the besieged Damascus suburb of Harasta on Wednesday, bringing the first delivery of aid to the area since government forces closed it off from the rest of the capital nearly four years ago.

Weekly Highlights:

In War-Torn Syria, Women Emerge as Changemakers

More and more Syrian women are at the forefront of new efforts to solve local conflicts and counter the death and destruction that has engulfed the country.
Syrian refugees cross from Syria to Turkey by the Orontes River, near the village of Hacipasa, Turkey, on Dec. 8, 2012. AP/Manu Brabo

Amid War and Conscription – A City Without Men

As the war in Syria pushes into its sixth year, the streets of Damascus are eerily absent of young men in civilian clothes. While many are off fighting on the front lines, thousands have hidden themselves away at home out of fear of being conscripted.
Syrians in a Damascus coffee shop watch a televised broadcast of President Bashar al-Assad delivering a speech in January 2012. AP/Muzaffar Salman

Curriculum v. Ideology: the War in the Classroom

In a classrooms across the opposition-controlled province of Idlib, the schoolcurriculum has become the battlefield for various factions trying to win the hearts and minds of Syrian youth.
Ahmed al-Fikri helps his 12-year-old son Abdo al-Fikri with his homework after school at their family home in the village of Maday in the province of Idlib on Sept. 29, 2013. AP

More Recent Stories to Look Out for at Syria Deeply:

Find our new reporting and analysis every weekday at www.newsdeeply.com/syria.
You can reach our team with any comments or suggestions at info@newsdeeply.org.

Top image: Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, center left, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, center, and United Nations special envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura, center right, attend the ministerial meeting on Syria in Vienna on May 17, 2016. Leonhard Foeger/Pool Photo via AP

Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect: “When the Security Council fails, the United Nations fails”

“When the Security Council fails, the United Nations fails,” video message from The Elders, Amnesty International and the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect

In advance of the World Humanitarian Summit next week, the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect collaborated with The Elders and Amnesty International on a video message calling upon the UN Security Council to take action to prevent and halt mass atrocities by agreeing to voluntarily restrain from using their veto and adopting a Code of Conduct.

The message features interviews with members of The Elders – including Jimmy Carter,  Kofi Annan and Mary Robinson –  as well as Secretary-General of Amnesty International, Salil Shetty, and Executive Director of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, Simon Adams.

On 24 May, Dr. Adams will moderate a high-level event organized by the Foreign Minister of Liechtenstein on the sidelines of the World Humanitarian Summit on “Security Council action in the service of humanity:implementing the commitment to prevent or end genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.”

Note for editors: The video features Kofi Annan, Chair of The Elders; Jimmy Carter, Elder and former President of the United States; Salil Shetty, Secretary-General of Amnesty International; Simon Adams, Director of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect; Mary Robinson, Elder and former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights; Martti Ahtisaari, Elder and former President of Finland; and Hina Jilani, Elder and Pakistani human rights advocate.

Justice for Sergei Magnitsky: Statement in Response to Representative Dana Rohrabacher’s Remarks at the House Foreign Affairs Committee Mark-up on Global Magnitsky

19 May 2016 – On 18 May 2016, the U.S. House For­eign Rela­tions Com­mit­tee passed the Global Mag­nit­sky bill, which cre­ates con­se­quences for cor­rupt offi­cials and human rights abusers around the world in the form of visa bans and asset freezes.

 

Dur­ing the mark-up of the bill, Con­gress­man Dana Rohrabacher, from Orange County, Cal­i­for­nia, pro­posed an amend­ment to exclude Magnitsky’s name from the title of the bill. To jus­tify his amend­ment, Con­gress­man Rohrabacher referred to a “confus­ing sit­u­a­tion” and “seri­ous ques­tions” that “Mag­nit­sky was being held [in Russ­ian deten­tion] because the Russ­ian Gov­ern­ment knew that there was $230 mil­lion of tax lia­bil­ity that they did not have the funds, that Mr Brow­der, that was his tax lia­bil­ity.”

 

Con­gress­man Rohrabacher’s remarks imply that Her­mitage did not pay the US$230 mil­lion in taxes to the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment, and the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment was con­cerned about recov­er­ing these funds from the start. These claims are wrong, and are con­tra­dicted by the facts and pub­licly avail­able doc­u­ments, including:

 

(i) Doc­u­men­tary evi­dence that the US$230 mil­lion in taxes had been paid by the Her­mitage Fund’s Russ­ian com­pa­nies to the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment in 2006,

ii) Doc­u­men­tary evi­dence that those US$230 mil­lion were stolen a year later through a mas­sive fraud per­pe­trated by a Russ­ian crim­i­nal organ­i­sa­tion com­pris­ing Russ­ian offi­cials, who stole Her­mitage com­pa­nies and then approved in one day the wire trans­fers of US$230 mil­lion away from the Russ­ian trea­sury to accounts opened by known Russ­ian crim­i­nals to a bank owned by a con­victed Russ­ian criminal;

(iii) Doc­u­men­tary evi­dence that Russ­ian author­i­ties ignored Hermitage’s orig­i­nal reports and com­plaints about the US$230 mil­lion fraud,

(iv) Doc­u­men­tary evi­dence that the Russ­ian author­i­ties did not look for the stolen money, and instead organ­ised retal­ia­tory crim­i­nal cases against Hermitage’s Russ­ian lawyers includ­ing Sergei Magnitsky.

The facts of the US$230 mil­lion fraud abet­ted by Russ­ian offi­cials are described in con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous com­plaintsfiled by Her­mitage, as well as in tes­ti­monies given by Sergey Mag­nit­sky nam­ing the per­pe­tra­tors, bank state­ments pro­vided by whistle­blower Alexan­der Perepilich­nyy show­ing the acqui­si­tion of multi-million dol­lar prop­er­ties and cash going to accounts of and for the ben­e­fit of Russ­ian offi­cials involved with the US$230 mil­lion fraud, mil­lions of dol­lars in assets and lav­ish lifestyles of Russ­ian offi­cials impli­cated in Magnitsky’s tes­ti­mony for their role in the US$230 mil­lion fraud, and, most recently, the Panama Papers’ leak show­ing some of the stolenUS$230 mil­lion reach­ing the cor­po­rate account of Sergei Roldugin, a close friend of Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin.
Con­gress­man Rohrabacher’s remarks are also con­tra­dicted by find­ings of inde­pen­dent author­i­ta­tive bod­ies, includ­ing the Coun­cil of Europe, who con­ducted a year-long inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion of the Mag­nit­sky case, and sum­ma­rized its con­clu­sions in a detailed report adopted in Jan­u­ary 2014, called “Refus­ing Impunity for the Killers of Sergei Mag­nit­sky.” The report­found the exis­tence in Rus­sia of a “mas­sive cover-up involv­ing senior offi­cials of the com­pe­tent min­istries, the Pros­e­cu­tor General’s Office, the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee and even cer­tain courts” and urged that “the cover-up must be reversed and the true cul­prits must be held to account.”

 

In sup­port of his remarks against Brow­der, Con­gress­man Rohrabacher brought up two arti­cles which pre­sented attacks on Brow­der by the legal defense team of Denis Kat­syv, the son of a Russ­ian offi­cial, who is unsuc­cess­fully try­ing to appeal a US court order and unfreeze US$14 mil­lion of his assets seized under the USGovernment’s money laun­der­ing and civil for­fei­ture action in rela­tion to the Mag­nit­sky case. The U.S. Depart­ment of Jus­tice has described Katsyv’s alle­ga­tions in rela­tion to William Brow­der as “false,”“wild”, and “untrue,” and his con­duct — as “egre­gious” and “inexcusable.”

 

Con­gress­man Rohrabacher also crit­i­cized Brow­der for threat­en­ing legal action against NBC. The story he is refer­ring to was an attempt by NBC’s reporter Ken Dilan­ian to repeat alle­ga­tions from Katsyv’s team that Sergei Mag­nit­sky wasn’t beaten in cus­tody and was never a whistle-blower. Both claims were in con­tra­dic­tion to pub­licly avail­able evi­dence from the Russ­ian Gov­ern­ment. Promi­nent Russ­ian human rights defend­ers, Lud­mila Alex­eeva and Valery Borschev, who per­son­ally inves­ti­gated the Mag­nit­sky case, spoke out against Ken Dilanian’s attempt to mis­rep­re­sent key facts about the Magnitsky’s case in pub­lic state­ments and in an open let­ter to NBCUni­ver­sal CEO Steve Burke. Ken Dilan­ian had pre­vi­ously allowed his sources to influ­ence or write his con­tent.

 

After Rohrabacher’s inter­ven­tion, the House For­eign Affairs Com­mit­tee sub­se­quently voted to reject his amend­ment and passed the Global Mag­nit­sky bill, which will now be up for a vote on the House floor. The date of the vote is not known yet.

 

The Global Mag­nit­sky bill is named after Sergei Mag­nit­sky, Hermitage’s lawyer who in 2007 – 2008 uncov­ered a mas­sive fraud per­pe­trated by Russ­ian offi­cials and organ­ised crim­i­nals to steal US$230 mil­lion that the three com­pa­nies of the Her­mitage Fund had paid to the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment in profit tax a year before, in 2006.  Sergei Mag­nit­sky tes­ti­fied about the fraud, named offi­cials involved, was then arrested by impli­cated offi­cials, kept in cus­tody with­out trial for 358 days in tor­tur­ous con­di­tions, denied fam­ily vis­its and med­ical care, and was killed on 16 Novem­ber 2009 at the age of 37, leav­ing a mother, a wife and two children.

 

In 2010, Sergei Mag­nit­sky was posthu­mously awarded by Trans­parency Inter­na­tional, a global anti-corruption organ­i­sa­tion, with ‘Integrity Award’ in recog­ni­tion of his stance against Russ­ian cor­rup­tion and offi­cial abuse.

 

For more infor­ma­tion, please contact:

 

Jus­tice for Sergei Magnitsky

+44 207 440 1777

e-mail: info@lawandorderinrussia.org

www.lawandorderinrussia.org

http://www.billbrowder.com/

https://twitter.com/Billbrowder

ICTJ: Debate Continues: Is Remembrance about Rights or Ideology?
Dear friends,

Our online debate is heating up with Pablo de Greiff and David Rieff’s rebuttals. We want to thank Sihem Bensedrine, President of Tunisia’s Truth and Dignity Commission, and all of those who already shared their valuable opinions in the comments section. We are looking forward to reading contributions from all of you. Your participation is key to this conversation.

We invite you to read Pablo and David’s responses to each other’s opening arguments. I am sure it will be hard not to jump in after you read their articles – and we hope you do!

Here is a taste of their rebuttal essays:

The Duty to Remember

“A blog is not the best place to lay the argument in favor of a duty. But let me try. Recalling that what is at stake here is not memory but the public acknowledgment of great violations of rights, a refusal to acknowledge them, to give them a place in our public space, involves a value judgment that there is no way to spin without demeaning the value of the victims or the importance of rights — not just their rights but rights in general for the value of the notion that these days rests to a large extent on their generalizability.

Aside from what it says about those who persist in the refusal to acknowledge the pain of others when the subject is the greatest atrocities known to human beings, at the limit, persisting in the refusal to acknowledge great harms in itself generates new harms. Recall, again, that the forms of remembrance at stake in this discussion are not private recollections but public manifestations of recognition.

To the extent that we expect others to be part of a shared political community, we owe them sufficient recognition for them to take the project to be truly shared. This is very clear in the case of our fellow citizens. “Fellow citizens,” however, does not refer to our compatriots only or those with whom we share a nationality. We are today fellow citizens of a community of rights. To the extent that we expect others to trust us in that capacity, we have the duty to remember everything that we cannot reasonably expect our fellow citizens to forget.”
Go to Pablo de Greiff’s Essay

Collective Remembrance is Ideological, Not Impartial

“Our disagreement largely centers on what happens later on, when those who have suffered the injury and, for that matter, their children and grandchildren, are no longer alive. Because while de Greiff is unquestionably right that for a victim of the military dictatorship in Argentina or the Ben Ali dictatorship in Tunisia, forgetting is not an option, those memories are as mortal as the people who retain them. To make an obvious point, there is in fact no such thing as collective memory but only individual memory.

Instead, what we are talking about when we invoke collective memory is the consensus about the past that societies develop and that evolve over time. It is that form of collective memory that I am so skeptical of, because, again, of my sense that it can be such a dangerous goad to resentment, hate, and war. From what de Greiff writes in his first contribution, I did not have the impression that he would necessarily disagree.

One final point, both de Greiff and Bensedrine appeal almost exclusively to the language of rights as if rights could be distanced from politics. As someone who believes that law is a fundamentally political artifact, I do not think this is possible. I would simply point out that, uncomfortable as many (though certainly not all) of its advocates are to admit this, human rights is an ideology just as surely as communism was or neoliberalism is today. Can a fundamentally ideological construct lay serious claim to being impartial? Perhaps it can, but I have to say I think it highly unlikely.”
Go to David Rieff’s Essay
Thank you again for all your contributions. Stay tuned for more upcoming guest contributors and closing remarks next week.

Sincerely,

Marcie Mersky
ICTJ Director of Programs

Justice for Sergei Magnitsky: Senators Cardin and McCain Call for a Swift Passage of Global Magnitsky After Clearing the House Foreign Affairs Committee

19 May 2016 – Fol­low­ing yesterday’s approval of the Global Mag­nit­sky Human Rights bill by the House For­eign Affairs Com­mit­tee, Sen­a­tors Cardin and McCain called on the House speaker to swiftly bring it to a vote.

 

“For too long in too many coun­tries, per­pe­tra­tors of human rights vio­la­tions and grand cor­rup­tion have not been held to account for their crimes and yet con­tinue to enjoy travel and finan­cial priv­i­leges in the United States. With today’s House For­eign Affairs Com­mit­tee pas­sage of the Global Mag­nit­sky Human Rights and Account­abil­ity Act, we are one step closer to pre­vent­ing such impunity, — said Sen­a­tors Ben Cardin and John McCain in a joint state­ment. — We …call on Speaker Ryan to ensure a full House vote on Global Mag­nit­sky with­out delay.”

 

Cardin and McCain, the two orig­i­nal co-sponsors of the Global Mag­nit­sky bill, spoke about the impor­tance ofSergei Magnitsky’s legacy.

 

“The bill is named for Sergei Mag­nit­sky, who has the unfor­tu­nate dis­tinc­tion of serv­ing as a prime exam­ple of the cor­rupt, hor­rific crimes that befall count­less inno­cent peo­ple world­wide. Mr. Mag­nit­sky lost his life for sim­ply doing his job and try­ing to do the right thing when he dis­cov­ered wide­spread fraud and abuse of power in Rus­sia. Just like Mag­nit­sky, human rights defend­ers are vic­tim­ized and stig­ma­tized around the globe,” said sen­a­tors Cardin and McCain.

 

The House For­eign Affairs Com­mit­tee rejected an amend­ment pro­posed by 68-year old Con­gress­man Dana Rohrabacher seek­ing to remove the name of Mag­nit­sky from the Global Human Rights bill. To jus­tify his amend­ment, Con­gress­man Rohrabacher claimed he could not fig­ure out who stole US$230 mil­lion from the Russ­ian bud­get – Sergei Mag­nit­sky or Russ­ian offi­cials. This is despite the fact that the money has been found in the accounts of Russ­ian offi­cials and their fam­i­lies and most recently, through the Panama Papers, on account of Sergei Roldugin, a close friend of Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin.

 

Other Con­gress­men firmly rejected Con­gress­man Rohrabacher’s amend­ment describ­ing it as an unac­cept­able attempt to “rewrite history.”

 

Con­gress­man Con­nolly said that it was impor­tant to call out behav­iour of Pres­i­dent Putin which did not adhere to inter­na­tional norms, “whether in Crimea or in a prison cell.”

 

Russ­ian vet­eran human rights defender Lud­mila Alex­eeva, chair of the Moscow Helsinki Group, sent a mes­sage to mem­bers of the House For­eign Affairs Com­mit­tee ahead of the mark up, stating:

 

“Con­gress­man Dana Rohrabacher has been fooled by the Russ­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion, and has argued that the name of Sergei Mag­nit­sky be dropped from the Global Mag­nit­sky Human Rights Bill. To do this would be a gross betrayal of the human rights move­ment, and of the legacy of Sergei Mag­nit­sky who had sto­ically sac­ri­ficed his life in con­fronting cor­rup­tion and offi­cial abuse in Rus­sia. … To remove his name from the Global Mag­nit­sky Human Rights bill would be a sell­out of vic­tims of oppres­sion and abuse every­where around the world, whom Serge Mag­nit­sky has given hope, and of the prin­ci­ples of integrity he had paid with his life.”

 

Dur­ing the mark-up, con­gress­man Engel said the Global Mag­nit­sky bill would show to all that human rights abuse and cor­rup­tion can­not go on with impunity:

 

“This leg­is­la­tion would send a pow­er­ful mes­sage that human-rights abusers and cor­rup­tion aren’t just inter­nal mat­ters.  They are the con­cern of all coun­tries, and they should not be per­mit­ted to go on with impunity.”

 

On the eve of the Global Mag­nit­sky bill’s mark-up, Russ­ian author­i­ties announced a new crim­i­nal case against Alexei Navalny, the Russ­ian anti-corruption activist and Mag­nit­sky sanc­tions sup­porter. The new case was opened in response to a com­plaint from ex police offi­cer Pavel Kar­pov, who has been sanc­tioned by the US and the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment for his role in Mag­nit­sky case.

 

Last month, the Russ­ian author­i­ties also announced another crim­i­nal probe opened on another spu­ri­ous appli­ca­tion of Pavel Kar­pov against Alexei Navalny and William Brow­der for mur­der of Sergei Mag­nit­sky in Russ­ian police cus­tody, as part of a CIA plan.

 

“The rea­son for the most recent attack on civil soci­ety lead­ers and out­burst of the Russ­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion on the Mag­nit­sky case is the fear of cor­rupt Russ­ian offi­cials to not be able to enjoy the fruits of their cor­rup­tion in the West as a result of Mag­nit­sky sanc­tions. To fight the Mag­nit­sky sanc­tions, they use fab­ri­cated crim­i­nal cases, and dis­in­for­ma­tion both inside the coun­try and in the West. Russ­ian civil soci­ety lead­ers and inde­pen­dent media have been almost com­pletely shut down, while the Russ­ian pop­u­la­tion is fed a diet of myths and dis­in­for­ma­tion,”said William Brow­der, a leader of the global jus­tice for Sergei Mag­nit­sky move­ment and author of “Red Notice: How I Became Putin’s No 1 Enemy.”

 

Sergei Mag­nit­sky, who exposed the theft of US$230 mil­lion from the Russ­ian bud­get and gave tes­ti­mony impli­cat­ing gov­ern­ment offi­cials, was arrested and killed in Moscow deten­tion cen­ter in Novem­ber 2009. Those respon­si­ble for his death and those he exposed for the US$230 mil­lion theft have not been brought to justice.

 

Global Mag­nit­sky Human Rights Account­abil­ity Act passed the U.S. Sen­ate vote in Decem­ber 2015.

 

For more infor­ma­tion, please contact

Jus­tice for Sergei Magnitsky

+44 207 440 1777

e-mail: info@lawandorderinrussia.org

www.lawandorderinrussia.org

http://www.billbrowder.com/

https://twitter.com/Billbrowder?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor