DAMASCUS, 6 June 2005 — Syria’s ruling Baath party is set to authorize new political parties and free local elections during its national congress this week although hefty restrictions are likely to accompany the reforms, a member said yesterday.
The first Baath party congress in five years comes as the regime of President Bashar Assad is under increasing pressure at home and abroad over allegations of supporting terror, missile tests over Turkey and a clampdown on dissidents.
Ayman Abdel Nur, a self-described “reformer” and Baath party member, told AFP the June 6-9 congress would propose free local elections in 2007 and a new law on political parties, allowing them to form as long as they are not “religion- or ethnic-based.” The two main opposition groups in Syria are Islamists and the minority Kurdish population but the Baath is the only legal movement.
Any new party would have to have branches in every region of Syria and collect a minimum of 10,000 to 15,000 member signatures, Nur said, a restriction that would likely prevent the formation of a Kurdish party because most of the country’s 1.5 million Kurds live in the northeast.
Meanwhile, Syrian authorities recently arrested two human rights activists, one of whom was allegedly detained for speaking at a memorial service for a slain Kurdish cleric, rights groups said.
Riad Arrar was arrested Saturday in northeast Syria “for having given a short speech at a ceremony honoring the memory of Sheikh Maashuq Khaznawi,” said the Syrian Centre for Legal Studies.
Khaznawi, a popular Kurdish Islamic figure, was abducted and murdered last month by what the Syrian government later called a “criminal gang.” Khaznawi’s followers suspected the Syrian government was behind the kidnapping and said his body showed “signs of torture.”
A second man, Hassan Dib, was arrested in the north for “unknown reasons” said the Syrian Centre for Legal Studies and the Arab Organization for Human Rights (AOHR).
