DAMASCUS, 18 May 2006 — Syrian authorities yesterday detained four more people as part of a crackdown on activists who signed a petition calling for Syrian recognition of Lebanon’s independence, a human rights group said. A total of seven people, including prominent writer and journalist Michel Kilo, have been detained since Sunday in Syria as part of the campaign against signatories of last week’s Beirut-Damascus Declaration.
The petition, signed by 274 Lebanese and Syrian intellectuals and published in Beirut last Thursday, called for Syrian recognition of Lebanon’s independence and the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two neighbors. Ammar Al-Qorabi, president of the Human Rights Association in Syria, said the security services yesterday arrested activist and doctor Safwan Tayfur in the northern city of Hama and translator Mahmoud Issa in the city of Homs, north of Damascus. Issa has been already been shortly detained twice, in 1992 and 2000 for membership in the outlawed Communist Action party.
A third man, identified as Khaled Khalifa, was detained in the city of Deir Al-Zor, 432 kilometers northeast of Damascus, because he carried the same name as a person who signed the petition, said Qorabi. “He is a citizen who has no political activities, but his name is similar” to one of the signatories, he said. Qorabi’s group later said in a statement that authorities had also detained in Damascus Khalil Hussein, a Kurd who was previously held as a political detainee for 12 years in Syria.
Two more Syrian activists who have signed the petition, Suleiman Al-Shaand Kamal Sheikho, have been summoned for questioning by security services, they said. Kilo and two other rights activists, Mahmoud Merhi and Nidal Darwish, were detained on Sunday in Damascus, according to Qorabi.
