|
The Syrian Policy of Communication (Information - Culture - Education) Hussein Al Oudat
The Right for Communication and the Freedom of Expression: In this age, it became obvious that each individual has the right to communicate and converse with other people to obtain information. Also, each individual has the right to exchange opinions, acquire education and participate to develop it through creativity and exhibiting his experience by using the cultural and information systems. McBride committee, formed by UNESCO, confirmed the right of communication for each individual in the world. The committee acknowledged "each individual's right to discuss, participate, meet, establish associations, acquire information and report them, plus the right of information, education and choice".
In reality, practicing
these rights demands obtaining the means of communication (mass media,
education and cultivation) to use them for expressing opinions and
benefiting them for discussions and dialogues.
Unfortunately, such rights are not seriously recognized in This announcement replaced the press law, which since 1963 became frozen and almost canceled. In spite of the newspapers' references and the official declarations about the outlet of a new press law, no practical steps were taken until nowژ(*)گ. Accordingly, the Syrian citizen and the civil societies have no right to establish any newspaper or magazine, or any readable, audio or visual information media. Consequently, the citizen has no base to practice his right to communicate or express his opinion except through the official means of information like, the government's newspapers and information media or the semi official newspapers of the masses' associations and unions. In fact, all these means do not permit any opposing opinion because they are all related to one scheme that expresses the one attitude of the state, officially, which is practically, the government's attitude. The Syrian constitution guaranteed the right to freedom of opinion and expression. Article No. 38 of the constitution included that "each citizen has the right to express his opinion, freely and openly, in writing, speech and all means of expressions". Also, the citizen has to "participate in supervising, criticizing and developing his country, in which the government guarantees the freedom of press, publication and distribution according to law". Therefore, the constitution guarantees the right, but its practical applications do not regard or respect this legal text. Practically, individuals, parties and political trends were deprived of this right. The state monopolized this right for the co-political system and its supporters, precisely, the co-government and its supporters. In this way, the successive governments dominated the information media and education, restricted them to their policies and applied them for their service. Moreover, the governments used these means to become their own voice that explains their achievements, praises their activities and masks their errors. Also, the governments cancelled supervision upon the administration of the state, besides canceling the other opinion and the minimum freedom of expression. Furthermore, official institutions and bureaucracy dominated the information media, which rarely paid attention to peoples' needs and interests, and always ignored the role of civil society organizations. Thus, creativity retreated and fear dominated the journalists and writers, especially those who were employed at the official information media and the prohibitions increased. One of the paradoxes is that the constitution of the ruling Ba'ath Party, approved in 1947, recognized that "the freedom of speech, meetings, belief and art is sacred, and no authority could abase it". The Syrian citizen was deprived from discussing the matters of his life, defining the features of his future, practicing the effective free dialogue, assisting to adopt the best choices, carrying the responsibility of his present and future, and choosing the way of his living. As a result, the consciousness deteriorated, education became shallow and the individuals were transformed into receivers without initiatives or creativity, and yield to actual conditions. The position of the policies of communication (Information, culture, education): The Arabic Committee for Studying the Matters of Information and Communication defined in its report, page 66, the policies of communication as the "Group of principles, rules, directions, conscious practices and prevailed conducts that the system of communication is based upon". These policies aim for "fulfilling the actual communicational needs of people through the ideal use of the available capacities and human and natural resources in the society, like art, communication and information". (P. 43) The policy of communication concerns the whole society and not a certain class only. It is supposed to care for the interests of all social groups and political trends, as well as, the cultural, ethnic and religious groups that exist in the country, and deals with the various concepts, values and goals of these groups. The most important provisions of this policy are its comprehensiveness and diversity, which necessarily requires the participation of all these groups. However, the policy of communication should not be produced by one group or rendered to serve one group. The paradox is that the Syrian government, which owns all information media and most of communication means, has no written policy of communication. If any existed, then it might be directions, routine work traditions, ministerial or administrative statements, or oral orders, and all are reactions to the emerging events and relay on individual initiatives of prominent politicians, informational cadres of authority or the supervisors of mass media. Most of these polices are for the sake of ordering and prohibiting, no real policy exists, if any existed, it would be oral and temporary. Thus, the cultural and information speech was transformed into a speech from a sender to a receiver, without any dialectical relation in between. The speech remained partial and concentrated on two matters, first, the publicity for the government and its achievements, second, the enlargement of entertaining programs, which were cost-less and superficial. Accordingly, the Syrian policy of communication was neglected or, almost, ignored the matters of development with their comprehensive concept like, the economical, social, cultural, educational and others. Due to the lack of various groups' participation, the policy, in fact, had no balance. The practices of the informational cadres were characterized by fear, lack of initiatives and lack of serious researches that fulfil the society needs. The obstacles to achieve the democracy of communication "oblige us to re-concentrate on the different freedoms of information, expression, thoughts and belief" because, as Mac-pride committee said (p. 14), "the imposed restrictions on these freedoms stiffen the development and progress toward a democratic communication systems". It is obvious that any non-Democratic system has harmful effects on communication, because there is a logical connection between the democracy of communication and the whole democracy of society. Thus, once we decide to study the actual position of communication we should always remember this connection to the Syrian policy. The actual position emerges from the prevailing ideology that is connected to the production of social-economical context.
The Actual Position of Means of
Communication in
1) There is no informational or cultural
industry in
2) There are three daily newspapers, which
are all published in 3) Specialized periodicals or half-periodical are published by masses' associations and organizations. 4) The government owns the Radio stations and TV local channels including the space channels. 5) At the beginning of year 2001, after President Bashar Assad resumed his responsibilities, the government permitted the publishing of one private weekly newspaper called: Al Dawmari. 6) At the beginning of year 2001, the government permitted the participating Parties of the Progressive National Front to issue their newspapers, distribute and sell them openly. 7) The import of Movies is still restricted to the government through the Institution of Film. Private movie theaters could not import films directly, except what comes through the Institution of Film. Private film production is permitted after inspection, as we will mention later. 8) Theaters' exhibitions and productions are divided between the public and private sectors after inspecting the theatrical texts. 9) The Institution of Distributing Publications, owned by the government, is the only distributor of local and imported newspapers and periodicals. 10) Private sector is permitted to own printing houses, but prohibited to publish any article, regardless of its size or subject, without censorship by an anticipated written agreement. 11) Private sector is prohibited from establishing centers for studies and researches. 12) Internet subscription was permitted in year 2000 and 2001, as well as, mobile phones.
13) On thousand Syrian citizens read,
daily, less than 10 newspapers and five books, and the own 300 radio
sets and 250 TV sets. The Syrian individual consumes about 3 kilograms
of paper for writing per year. Although the estimated numbers are not
precise, they still refer to the cultural and educational miserable
condition in Censorship & Supervision: Anticipated and successive supervision, sometimes, are practiced on any information or cultural activity, whether readable, written, or audible. Also, school books, lectures, meetings and all what is related to contact and communication are controlled according to the following mechanism: 1) Daily newspapers are subjugated to self-supervision, which means the journalist's self-control, and to the supervision of Press Institution. As all the newspapers are related to government, thus, their editors and supervisors do the function of controlling. The other permitted non-Syrian newspapers and magazines are inspected by the department of supervision in the Ministry of Information, which has the right to permit or reject them. These newspapers were distributed in the evening time instead of early morning because they needed time to be inspected. This method was changed after the middle of the year 2000, and newspapers became distributed a little bit earlier. 2) Weekly newspapers and periodicals that related to the Parties of the Progressive front are self-inspected by specialist supervisors of the Parties. The newspapers of masses' organizations and associations are all self-inspected by their own directories. 3) Movies and TV serials: - A specified directory in the Ministry of Culture controls the imported movies. - A specialized directory in the General Institution of Radio and TV controls imported TV series. - Local films and serials' productions pass twice to censorship, first, to control texts, second, to control the terminated production before presentation. The proposed TV serials are censored by the General Institution of Radio and TV, and Films by the Ministry of Culture. - The Ministry of Culture controls the theatrical performances twice, once to inspect the texts and the other is before its performance. 4) Books: Many institutions inspect the prepared manuscripts before publication as follow:
A - The issued books for inside The manuscript is presented to the Ministry of Information- department of supervision to obtain its approval; then, this department transfers the manuscript to one of the following directions: 1) If the manuscript is related to creativity, like Poetry, Stories, Novels, Literary studies and others, it will be sent to the Union of Writers, which formed supervising committees, called "the readers", as a preliminary step toward permission or prohibition. 2) If the manuscript is related to a political, religious or philosophical subjects or intellectual in general, then it will be sent to the Regional Leadership - the office of preparation to decide whether to agree or forbid it. 3) If the manuscript is of a military scheme, then it will be sent to the Department of Morale Directing at the Ministry of Defense. 4) Sacred books and some religious books are sent to the Ministry of Religious Endowments. 5) The department of supervision in the Ministry of Information controls the other subjects.
6) Schoolbooks are all unified in In all the former cases, after approval, the manuscript is returned to its owner for publication. After printing the manuscript, the owner has to return it again to the department of supervision in the Ministry of Information to obtain another approval for distribution. These procedures to obtain the approvals for a manuscript might take months. All the practiced measures of supervision are relative. The measures are not written nor detailed, and vary from each other. Thus, the relativity of approval or rejection differs from one institution to another, and sometimes, differs from one supervisor to another within the same department. In fact, the Syrian supervision yield to various measures, values and general expressions, such as, preserving the general morals, the nations' values, the national security or the benefit of masses and others. All the measures are undefined and general, therefore, they are able to differ and contradict according to the specific understanding of the supervisor. Due to these variations of control, it happens that a manuscript might be accepted after it was rejected months before with a different title. This is justified because of different supervisors' measurements. B - Imported book are often supervised only by the department of supervision in the Ministry of Information with some exceptions, which are related to political and religious books that demand the permission of the Regional Leadership to enter the country. The Policies of Education: Article No. 37 of the Syrian constitution indicates that "education is a guaranteed right by the government. Primary school is compulsory and all stages are free of charges". According to this constitutional text, law No. 35 of year 1981 indicated that "all the parents of Syrian children, male and female, between the ages of 6 - 12 years are obliged to send their children to primary schools". Moreover, in case the parents would not let their children attend schools, the law specified fines and penalties. The policy of education committed to constitution and this law, and gave the right of free education, including university and high education studies, to all citizens regardless of their gender, religion and region. Also, this policy made important efforts to apply the compulsory education for children and penalize the parents who deny that. As the percentage of private schools does not reach 2%, the government handles the whole educational system like, schools, equipment, teachers and others, and submits the books with net costs. Practically, private schools contain the students who are unaccepted at the elementary and secondary public schools, beside wealthy students at the primary schools. In all cases, schoolbooks are the same, with rare exceptions, and all schools are, completely, supervised by the Ministry of Education. The way and methods of teaching depend upon instructing and, rarely, implicate dialogue and conversing. Thus, the methods are briefed as a sender (teacher or professor) and a recipient (pupil or student). Analysis, induction and deduction, which enable reaching the logical right thinking, are rarely applied. The student is only required to memorize without thinking. Therefore, the student is evaluated and examined through the contents of the schoolbooks. Even though, a student has correct opinions, he is prohibited to present anything that is not included in the schoolbooks. The universities and colleges, as well, do not require the student to inspect resources other than the schoolbooks program, if he researches in other resources and uses their topics, he will not be credited. On the other hand, many obstacles prevent the application of new methods of education and the dynamism of collective work in the educational activities, whether inside classrooms or outside them, including universities. In all cases, discussions are not upgraded to the level of analyzing matters and presenting suppositions to solve them. Actually, the information of the schoolbooks are confirmed without enabling any chance for the student to discover or suggest resolutions. We conclude that the new progress and development in the world (communication, information system and technology) did not affect to change the methods of teaching and its democracy. Also, the economical openness was not accompanied by a democratic one or by the plurality of opinions or the respect of dialogue and other opinion. Moreover, teaching methods did not change to train students for new costumes and transfer them from the receiving scheme to the initiative, discussion, induction and deduction schemes. So, the values of science, mind, freedom and democracy remained faced by the morals of legends, fables and supernatural thoughts. Furthermore, the co-operation between teacher and student to discuss matters was lost. Thus, the position of teacher's instructing and a students' yielding remained. Accordingly, the knowledgeable mind of the generations vanished and creativity declined, instead, the measurable mind prevailed and the whole society transformed into recipients of philosophy, politics, discoveries, creations and industrial applications. The Forums and Organizations of the Civil Society: As we said before, it is obvious that each person has the right for contact, communication, dialogue, expression of opinion, obtaining information and spreading it, besides, learning about others' experiences and presenting his personal experience. These rights that are included in the Syrian constitution and International Treaties, which were considered as essential human needs, can be achieved through the establishment of cultural and educational organizations, social and cultural associations and political and non-political Parties of multiple aims. So, it is necessary to establish organizations of civil society, support them and give them the chance to accomplish their functions away from the domination and interference of the government.
The present regime in After President Bashar Assad resumed his responsibilities, he expressed clearly his new policy in the speech of the constitutional oath. He said: "Before it is our right, democracy is our duty toward the others. Democratic thoughts are the foundation and the democratic practices are the construction. For sure, all of us know that whenever the foundation is weak, the construction becomes threatened to fall down with the first shake". The speech of the president, the diversions and the releases of hundreds of political prisoners and the contact with political groups from outside the Progressive Front encouraged the intellectuals to express their opinions. Thus, the intellectuals held meetings for dialogue in their homes and issued statements, which included their troubles and demands. They demanded the freedom of expression, freedom of opinion, the respect of political and cultural plurality, the termination of Martial Laws, the adjustment of the constitution to guarantee the possibility of alternating authority. Hundreds of intellectuals from all directions participated in the forums' activities and used their residences to hold meetings of dialogues and discussions. These forums multiplied like fungus and spread in most Syrian cities, quickly. Depriving the intellectuals of their right to express themselves and converse about the matters of their country for forty years made them suggest in their forums everything, the possible and the impossible, the essential and the secondary, as if releasing the suppression became their aim. Thus, in many cases, they lost the clear vision and methodology, especially that they were from different groups and directions. Consequently, the forums turned into useless talks, in which protesting and rejecting became their main goal. On the other hand, many powers of the regime were scared, especially that they used to give orders, instruct and act alone during decades. They never believed in the freedoms of opinion and expression, nor plurality, and could not accept the principle of dialogue, so, how can these powers accept the opinions which discuss the legitimacy of their continuity? Therefore, these powers made all the efforts to enlarge the danger of forums on the regime and its continuity, and accused the intellectuals of contacting foreign powers. Accordingly, the authority prohibited the activities of the forums, except some of them. Thus, in spite of having all the basics for success, the forums' experiment failed. In fact, these forums could have established a dialogue with the political system. If they defined their actual goals and regarded dialogue as their primary demand to discuss with the system the conditions of Syrian society and its prospect, and if they looked for common divisors between the various political and cultural trends and the regime, they would have succeeded. Also, if the political system had the real intention for divergence, by applying the political and cultural plurality and accepting the other, the experiment might had a different conclusion.
Concerning the political system, it seems
that the closing and prohibition of forums is not the end. Many private
and public references and intentions are confirming the president's
desire to establish a form of contact and communication with the
political and cultural trends in The Syrian society is in bad need for freedom of expression, opinion, dialogue, communication, establishment of cultural and information platforms. Also, information media and education are needed to be open for all the citizens and should be withdrawn from the government's control. The supervision on conscience and mind should be canceled. Besides, all types of civil society's organizations should participate in implementing the policies of information, culture, education and the democracy of communication. The benefits of all the groups of society should be regarded. Also, the information media should have its right of supervision and criticism.
Syrian citizens are working and expecting
all these rights and freedoms to be obtained because there is no other
choice for __________ Note: (*) In 18.08.2001, the Council of Ministers issued the draft of a new press law, which included adjustments and renewal for some Articles in the law that were still effective since 1949. The Parliament must discuss and vote for the draft law before the President of the Republic issues it. According to Al Thawra newspaper, this draft law is related to organize the work of libraries, printing and publishing houses. (The editor).
|