Many of laborers involved in the process of renovating our building are actually denaturalized Kurds, that is, descendants of Kurdish citizens that have been stripped away of their Syrian citizenship as a result of the 1962 census and the manipulations that took place at that time. In other words, they belong to the very group of people whose basic rights my team and I at the Tharwa Projectare supposed to be busy defending, and are actually doing so, to the best of our restricted abilities. Continue reading “A Heretical Closure!”
Tag: Identity Politics
Syria Squeezed: Are We Free Yet?
… What is going on now is a lot of testing of “red lines,” as everyone in Damascus seems to call them. People are saying things and publishing things. But many of them, like al-Bounni and Ammar Abdulhamid, who heads the minority-rights Tharwa Project, are engaged in a harrowing pas de deux with the government. Al-Bounni and Abdulhamid are both barred from leaving the country. Intelligence officials have interrogated Abdulhamid three times since January. Al-Bounni has seen his siblings and friends thrown in jail for peaceful political speech. No one testing the limits knows when the next crackdown might come or what will provoke it. Continue reading “Syria Squeezed: Are We Free Yet?”
Why Minorities?
Tharwa Editorial
One of the main criticisms that the Tharwa Project has received focuses on its emphasis on the rights of religious and ethnic minorities in the region, noting that this could easily conflict with other avowed goals of the Project, namely: the interest in democracy promotion in the region and raising the standards of civic awareness and citizenship therein. The emphasis on minorities, we are told, could eventually increase the feeling of non-belonging and separation among minority groups, further isolating them from the rest of society and further feeding the growing ethnic and sectarian suspicions that exist between minority and majority populations in the region. As such, wouldn’t it be better to simply focus on democratization and citizen rights? Continue reading “Why Minorities?”
The Dead Weight of History
What’s one to do with the dead weight of history and demographics? No, I am not about to embark here on some elitist complaint against the “ignorant masses,” or the “mob,” I am merely referring to the all-too real problem related, in part, to the confusion surrounding issues of identity and belonging, and, in other part, to the sheer pressure that population explosion exerts on the basic social services that a state should provide in order to survive in this world (its survival being of major importance to the wellbeing of at least the majority of its inhabitants, if not all).
The Ammar Abdulhamid Archive 