Syria censored Assad interview

Syrian President Bashar Assad tampered with the transcript of a lengthy interview he conducted with the New York Times, presenting a condensed Arabic version to his citizens while the full version, in English, was published abroad.

Questions and answers regarding Syria's domestic situation, Iraq, Hezbollah, normalization with Israel and U.S.-Syrian security cooperation were omitted from the Nov. 30 interview, noted Syrian journalist Subhi Hadidi, writing on Al-Rai, the website of the Syrian Communist party.

The article was translated by the Washington, D.C.-based Middle East Media Research Institute, or MEMRI.

Calling it Assad's most important interview with the American press, Hadidi charged that the omissions show the president is not the young, modern, reformist he imagines himself to be.

Assad succeeded his father, Hafez Assad, regarded as a pragmatic and cruel tyrant who ruled Syria for 30 years before his death in 2000. The elder Assad banned all political parties except his own, the Baath, which also was the party of Saddam Hussein.

MEMRI noted the interview was conducted in Arabic and translated into English by Assad's office for publication by the New York Times. An Arabic version was published by the Syrian government news agency Sana and by the London Arabic-language daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat.

Hadidi said the English version had 11,280 words while the official Syrian press published only 5,500 words yet called it the "full version."

"What did Al-Assad tell America and the entire world yet at the same time thought not fitting to tell the Syrians?" Hadidi wrote.

One omission, he said, was Assad's claim the Syrian opposition both at home and abroad is united with Damascus in rejection of U.S. efforts to bring democracy to Iraq.

Hadidi asked: "If Al-Assad sees this compliance in the Syrian opposition, and speaks of it to the Americans almost with pride, why does he conceal it from the Syrian people? Is this miserable people so backward that even these facts are hidden from it – although they reach it anyway via television and newspapers, as the president himself says? And if the Syrian people is so backward, how does Al-Assad praise it generously when he speaks of the people's 'love' for the president"

In another omitted section, Assad denied his nation suppresses speech.

Question: There is a period where dialogue was open, people were going to forums and there were discussions. It has all stopped. Why is that?

Assad: No, nothing has stopped. You can go to Al-Atasi Institute and we have many others.

Question: Just two months ago, they tried to have one in Aleppo and the men were arrested when they showed up.'

Al-Assad: That had to do with speaking about certain ethnicity. They didn't criticize the government; they talked about the rights of the Kurds. The Kurds are Syrians, so what rights of the Kurds? It is something related to the national unity if you talk about ethnicities. We have Chechens, Armenians and you are not allowed in the law of Syria to talk about this. This is our law. I don't know them, but they make demonstrations for things related to this issue, which is not allowed in our law. It is not related to the regime.

Hadidi said it is clear why the Syrian media did not publish this section.

"There is no Al-Atasi Institute; the only thing there is is a club," he wrote. "The Aleppo residents were not demonstrating but came to a political symposium whose topic was not Kurds' rights. But even if they had been [demonstrating] – what's the crime?"

Similarly, in another omitted section, Assad is pressed about the lack of democratic reforms.

Question: Two years ago, in Damascus, you could hear any kind of discussion about democracy, law and economic reform, but it is gone now.

Assad: No, it is not gone. I will give you the address of Atasi, which is opposition.

Question: But this is just one person. There used to be dozens.'

Assad: Let me ask you a question: What is the ideal number?'

Question: It is not a question of a number. It is a question that people no longer feel free to have an open discussion.

Assad: Why don't you go and see for yourself?

Question: I have looked around for them. It is very hard to find.

Assad: We can give you the names … .

Hadidi commented: "Does Al-Assad want to say that the clubs still exist, as in the past? Is it enough to give the address of the Al-Atasi 'Institute' in order to prove his claim that there is freedom of speech, not to mention full implementation of democracy?"

The official Syrian news agency also censored a section in which Assad was pressed about corruption "around" him, in his circle of power.

The president responded: "Why around me? What do you mean?"

In response, the interviewer brought up a scandal involving Assad's cousin's entanglement in a mobile phone business deal, and said, "The list is long."

Assad replied: "He is a Syrian like all Syrians, whether he is my cousin, my brother, my friend, or anyone else. There is Syrian law."

Hadidi noted, however, a man who exposed the corrupt business deal, Riyadh Seif, has been imprisoned, ostensibly on tax evasion charges.

As WorldNetDaily reported, a relative of the president, Assef al-Shaleesh, runs Al Bashair Trading Co., a front for the Assad family involved prior to the Iraq war in oil and arms smuggling. Al-Bashair has offices in Damascus, Beirut and Baghdad.

Al-Shaleesh's uncle, Zu Alhema al-Shaleesh, is reported to have hidden Iraqi weapons of mass destruction in three locations in Syria.

In an exclusive interview Monday with the London Telegraph, Assad came closer than ever before to admitting his country possessed stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.

In his response to Assad's New York Times interview, Hadidi asked, "Who was it then who edited, amended, or censored the President's interview? Is it the hero of the interview himself? Is it another body, better versed in the doctrine of magic and secrecy? Why wasn't the translation that was given to The New York Times also censored?"

He concluded, "Does the [presidential] palace wish to persuade the American press that the regime is being run with integrity and transparency, and [thus] gave the newspaper a full, not abridged, translation – but at the same time denigrated the minds of the Syrians and gave them selected grains?"

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