Amnesty has been granted to all those politically criminalised before May 31 [Reuters]
Syrian president Bashar al Assad has issued a general amnesty aimed at calming 10 weeks of protests against his rule and a deadly military crackdown that has rocked the nation.
Syrian state-run media made the announcement on Tuesday, saying that "President Assad has by decree issued an amnesty on all [political] crimes committed before May 31, 2011."
The amnesty is to include all members of political movements, including the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood and all political prisoners, the report said.
Membership in the brotherhood, which led an armed rebellion against Assad's father in 1982, had been punishable by death in Syria.
The amnesty decree is believed to be a part of the overtures by the Syrian government to its opposition, largely seen as symbolic.
But it is also seen as an appeal to protesters, as one of their main demands has been the release of political prisoners, along with others such as curbing the power of Syrian security forces.
"It is one of the most important demands because people are spending many years in prison because of their demands for the human rights of our people," Anwar Al Bunni, a lawyer and human rights activist in Syria who spent five years in jail before being released last week, told Al Jazeera.
Bunni said that while amnesty for political prisoners is an important step, Syria needs to undergo many more changes.
"We need to form parties, we need to work politically, we need to meet, we need to have our independent media... we need to open a new page in Syria - a democratic Syria, a free Syria."
Amnesty 'insufficient'
The amnesty announcement was also shrugged off by Syrian opposition activists gathered in Turkey to discuss democratic change and voice support for the revolt.
"This measure is insufficient: we demanded this amnesty several years ago, but it's late in coming," activist Abdel Razak Eid told the AFP news agency.
"We are united under the slogan: the people want the fall of the regime and all those who have committed crimes brought to account. Blood will not have been spilled in vain," he said.
Syria has blamed the violence in the country on armed groups, Islamists and foreign agitators, saying more than 120 police and soldiers have been killed in the unrest.
The European Union last week slapped an assets freeze and travel ban on Assad himself, the latest in a string of sanctions against his regime.
Stepping up pressure on Assad to halt weeks of relentless violence, the EU earlier this month imposed an arms embargo and targeted the president's innermost circle, including his brother and four cousins.
Activists say that at least 10,000 people have been arrested since the start of the popular uprising almost two months ago.
Accurate information from Syria is difficult to confirm, as journalists have largely been denied access, but human rights groups say that more than 1,000 protesters have been killed since the uprising started.
Obama Must Give General Amnesty to all Prisoners
There has been a long call to free all prisoners unjustly held in American prisons and jails. Ninety per cent were mind altered at the time of their arrest, at least 50% were likely dual diagnosed, i.e., suffer drug abuse and mental illness. The majority are in for petty crimes and if they'd had proper legal representation would serve little or no time at all.
Not only are their crimes petty but should be seen as economic crimes due to poverty and lack of opportunity in a system that is advancing to what must be called neo-feudalism or wage slavery with little permanent employment, no health insurance, no unionism, thus they work at the whim of bosses who earn mega salaries and generous bonuses.
Once incarcerated, they suffer sexual and physical abuse, otherwise known as torture of the worse kind, and this includes inmates of mental wards, juvenile homes, jails and prisons. Those prisoners of conscious are often the most isolated for fear they will infect the population with radical ideology. The death row inmates are usually black and poor again, again, would not be on death row with proper legal representation.
The economic and social cost is astronomical, between fifty and sixty thousand dollars per inmate per year, more than it would cost to send them to Harvard, Yale and Stanford. But incarceration is big business in the era of de-industrialisation or the withering world of work, especially jobs with a living wage. Yet these neo-slaves, i.e., under the US Constitution involuntary servitude is legal, are a valuable commodity in the economic order. Prisons and jails are big business, in many communities the only business. They are now privatized and part of the military/corporate/university complex of institutions that perpetuate the capitalist system of free market exploitation. The incarcerated are of such value that the most powerful union in the state of California is the Correctional Officers Union that obviously has a vital stake in keeping the prison population high so they can maintain their lifestyle of conspicuous consumption. The Union will fight to the death to prevent a general amnesty.
In cahoots with the correctional officers are police departments who must arrest a quota of persons to maintain their jobs and justify their budgets. In some cities the police departments consume the major portion of city funds, to the neglect of schools, libraries and employment projects that would decrease arrests, court costs and incarceration. Many times the police are guilty of planting false evidence, false arrests, engaging in prostitution, drug dealing and money laundering. This behavior by law enforcement is a common feature below the border in Mexico, but is rapidly becoming a feature across the border in the US.
In some cases the police are in conspiracy with developers to destabilize neighborhoods that soon fall to gentrification. All the above applies to Oakland, California. It is a community under siege by police and gangs connected with the police. We suspect half the black on black homicide is police conspired.
A general amnesty must become a top priority of communities, especially with so many men falling victim to the slave catching police. This leads to family disintegration by increasing single family households. It is causing personality deformations in boys and girls who suffer prolong identity crisis since they lack positive male models. A young man attending a drug recovery meeting said, "Man, you might think some of my friends are gay, but they ain't gay, they just never heard a man's voice!"
We must reclaim are people from the dungeons , hellholes and Gulags in America. We cannot continue allowing them to be commodities in the capitalist system, similar to pork, corn, wheat and oil, to be traded on the stock exchange as neo-slaves.
If the last act of Saddam Hussein was a general amnesty, surely President Obama can do the same. It may get him some much needed brownie points for his 2012 election bid. But he must do so because it is the right thing to do. To not do so is economically and socially unsustainable.
--Marvin X
1/4/11
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