Amina Abdallah Araf al Omari, a Syrian-American blogger (A Gay Girl in Damascus) who has become well-known recently as opposition to the Syrian regime has grown in the past few months, is reported to have been abducted by armed men while walking in Damascus yesterday evening.
Earlier today, at approximately 6:00 pm Damascus time, Amina was walking in the area of the Abbasid bus station, near Fares al Khouri Street. She had gone to meet a person involved with the Local Coordinating Committee and was accompanied by a friend.
Amina told the friend that she would go ahead and they were separated. Amina had, apparently, identified the person she was to meet. However, while her companion was still close by, Amina was seized by three men in their early 20’s. According to the witness (who does not want her identity known), the men were armed. Amina hit one of them and told the friend to go find her father.
One of the men then put his hand over Amina’s mouth and they hustled her into a red Dacia Logan with a window sticker of Basel Assad. The witness did not get the tag number. She promptly went and found Amina’s father.
The men are assumed to be members of one of the security services or the Baath Party militia. Amina’s present location is unknown and it is unclear if she is in a jail or being held elsewhere in Damascus.
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Amina was born in Virginia. Her father is Syrian and her mother is American and she has both Syrian and U.S. citizenship. She works in Damascus as an English teacher.
From her blog:
http://damascusgaygirl.blogspot.com/...
I was born an Arab; I was born a Syrian. Arabic was the language of my first words and, insh’allah, it will be that of my last. My first memory is of Damascus and, perhaps, so too will be my last.
But I am complex, I am many things; I am an Arab, I am Syrian, I am a woman, I am queer, I am Muslim, I am binational, I am tall, I am too thin; my sect is Sunni, my clan is Omari, my tribe is Quraysh, my city is Damascus ….
And I am also a Virginian. I was born on an afternoon in a hospital in sight of where Woodrow Wilson entered the world, where streets are named for country stars … I grew up on a battlefield of the American Civil War in a town where other ancestors have lived and died for 250 years. And I learned this language in Virginia.
As a Virginian, I know other things besides those that I learned for other parts of me. I learned words and aspirations and desire to be free; I memorized whole passages and made them a part of me. I learned to say that “should I hold back my opinions at such a time, through fear of giving offense, I should consider myself guilty of treason towards my country, and of disloyalty toward the Majesty of Heaven, whom I revere above all earthly kings.”
I learned to declaim: “Is life so dear or is peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, All Mighty God! I do not know the course that others will take; but for me, Give me liberty or Give me death!” for those were good Virginian words.
I learned to recite Quran and I learned to recite another Virginian’s words:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.”
Amina’s ‘A Gay Girl in Damascus’ Blog:
http://damascusgaygirl.blogspot.com/
Facebook page with her picture:
http://www.facebook.com/...
Articles about Amina Abdullah:
http://newsfeed.time.com/...
http://www.cbsnews.com/...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
http://www.abc.net.au/...
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The seemingly schizophrenic stances of the current government in Turkey are making my head ache.
Supporting the Assad government,
Not supporting the Assad government,
Distancing itself from the Assad government,
Advising the Assad government,
Supporting the Syrian opposition – primarily Sunni Muslim opposition to the Assad government,
Allowing Assad government supporters to disrupt the Syrian opposition’s meetings in Turkey,
... and so on.
I have been trying to work them out and learn more about these events because I would like to write about them, but it’s all just too unclear right now for me to be able to do so.
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