Speech and public debate
with Haytham Manna
Thursday, August 23rd, 9pm
The NBC is a coalition of democratic forces which are taking part in the popular rebellion under the well-known slogan of the three NOs:
No to foreign intervention!
No to militarization and civil war!
No sectarianism!
In difference to the “Syrian National Council” (SNC) it is based within the country and includes representatives of all religious communities as well as the Kurds. It has come into sharp conflict with the SNC which way accuse of committing exactly what the SBC is opposing with the three NOs. The NBC reproaches to the SNC in substance to follow foreign agendas. While fully supporting the popular movement and the democratic demands, it is until now favouring a negotiated transition to avert the descent into civil war and foreign meddling – something the rival SNC has ruled out from the very beginning.
Haytham Manna was born in Deraa and already in his tens he supported the Palestinian resistance. He became activist of the Syrian left calling for the commons Arab struggle against Zionism and imperialism.
While student of medicine and social sciences at the university of Damascus be became member of the Communist Action League and later got elected into its Political Bureau. He head to go for two years underground until he left the country in 1978. He settled in Paris were he lives as an author and human rights activist. He is founding member of the “Arab Committee for Human Rights”.
Manna publicly opposed the military court trials against the leaders of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, has joined to campaign to close down Guantanamo and is engaged to hold Israeli war criminals accountable.
Together with Manna and Michel Kilo the Anti-imperialist Camp is engaged in the solidarity campaign with the democratic uprising. On the basis of a political platform “For democracy, social justice, peace and national sovereignty”, endorsed by dozens of European activists and intellectuals, we have been preparing a delegation to Syria (as well as other activities) to express support to the democratic popular forces of the rebellion as well as to report about this unknown and unwanted creature – unwanted by imperialism, its local proxies following their own agenda, but also by Russia and China as well as their apologists in the left.
