ASSAD THE DESPOT

on the death of Assad

by Emma Bonino

La Stampa, June 15, 2000

On the death of the Syrian despot Assad, Europe has behaved exactly as it did on the thirtieth anniversary of Colonel Qaddafi's dictatorship last year. The Europe of the opinion-makers, led by Italy, is once again kow-towing to Mediterranean tyrants, dead or alive: ignoring their crimes, minimizing their excesses, forgetting the coups with which they seized power - and extolling their sagacity and wisdom. In sum, Europe considers and presents them as the best partners for us and as the best governments for the peoples who are fated to have them as leaders.

I find it quite shocking that the world is allowed to believe that during the last thirty years the men and women of Libya and Syria did not deserve (and still do not deserve) some other form of government.

I find it highly irresponsible to ignore the evidence, i.e., that the principal threat to "the peace, security and well-being of the Mediterranean peoples" (a label and slogan that provides the theme for at least one conference a day) comes precisely from those countries where, instead of democracy, there are autocrats who consider themselves above the law and who do not believe they are answerable for their actions, either to their own subjects or the International Community.

I would like to have read, on the thirtieth anniversary of Qaddafi's dictatorship last September, an editorial or a statement that described him as he really is: a capricious caudillo who has stolen from his fellow Libyans thirty years' worth of oil profits and squandered them, by buying sophisticated weapons, financing useless wars with neighbouring countries and terrorist operations throughout the world, hiring assassins to kill his political opponents, and opening Swiss bank accounts for his entourage. Doesn't Libya deserve something better?

I would like to have heard, following Assad's death, someone describe the sinister Syrian regime as it really is; a regime installed by tanks and kept in place by thirty years of oppression and conspiracy, which has survived the death of the tyrant by staging a constitutional farce to establish an "hereditary dictatorship" in the style of Kim Il Sung & Son, the Stalinist dynasty that rules North Korea.

Instead, I watched absolutely speechless as Romano Prodi and other European leaders elbowed their way to Assad's coffin, as they did to Qaddafi's Bedouin tent. Now dictators are being acclaimed, as if they were examples to follow.

While people continue to discuss the "vocation for modernity" of Assad's son Bashar (will we find ourselves with an Assad II?), I myself would like to be with those Libyans and Syrians who continue to fight for democracy, and I sincerely hope that they will very soon be governed by their fellow citizens - by no means few - who believe in the rule of law and in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.