Arab Foundation Launches Solidarity Campaign for Damascus Declaration Detainees
SkEyes, the foundation for the defense of cultural and media freedoms in the Arab Mashreq, announced that the foundation launched on Monday a campaign to collect signatures in Lebanon and the Arab world to express solidarity with the twelve signatories of the Damascus Declaration now detained in Syria.
The Damascus Declaration, signed by 163 Syrian intellectuals, also called for peaceful democratic change in Syria.
Elias Khoury, the head of the Foundation, added that the campaign also aimed to support Michel Kilo and Mahmoud Issa, detainees who have still not been released despite the decision of the Syrian Court of Cassation to overturn their sentences.
Kilo and Issa were sentenced to jail in May 2007 on charges of having "weakened national sentiment" and for "undermining the image of the State." They were also accused of stirring sectarian strife.
Kilo”s arrest triggered condemnations from Lebanese and Syrian intellectuals and political groups. Issa had been detained twice before, in 1992 and 2000, for being in the outlawed Communist Action party.
In a statement issued on Tuesday, the foundation, which included writers, journalists, poets and artists, called for the immediate and unconditional release of the twelve Syrian opposition figures, which had called for democratic reforms in Syria and were jailed for 30 months, in addition to Kilo and Issa.
The statement added that the state, which does not respect freedom of expression, is a state which does not respect freedom of speech, the Syrian constitution or the international human rights declarations that it signed.