Share this
Mister Wong
Digg
Del.icio.us
Slashdot
Furl
Yahoo
Technorati
Newsvine
Googlize this
Blinklist
Facebook
Wikio
Print
E-mailSubhi Muhammad
Monday, January 26, 2009
Monday, January 26, 2009
On January 26, 2009, the Syrian newspaper Tishreen published a story of a shocking crime perpetrated in the city of Homs. The article related a raid on a house in the neighborhood of Bayyadah, inside of which was hidden an illegal slaughterhouse. The animals found inside that slaughterhouse, according to the reported testimony of Director of Health Issues, Dr. Muhammad Ali Ghali, were unfit for human consumption. They were rotten, kept under clothing rather than in properly sanitized rooms. The owner of the house admitted that he sold the rotten meat to local butchers, who would mix it with fresh meat, spices and other condiments, and then sell it to consumers as fresh.According to the article’s interview with Dr. Ghali, in 2008 alone, twenty such slaughterhouses were found and shut down, totaling over a ton of rotten meat intended to be sold to consumers. The owners of these slaughterhouses exhibited little to no awareness or concern of the danger such meat posed to those who ate it.
Such illegal slaughterhouses are only one example of the dangerous misrepresentation of food sold to consumers throughout Syria. The same edition of Tishreen had an article reporting that patrols by the Health Department had recently confiscated more than 83 dead cows and sheep, 94 kg of chicken meat, and large quantities of other, expired food items, being sold in shops in Deir al-Zur. Among the confiscated items were cans of food intended for children. The Health Department had been forced to shut down over 100 shops, and had issued over 2000 fines for violations against the health and hygiene codes.
The newspapers report numbers like this without going any deeper into the issue. For Tishreen, the story was the raid on the slaughterhouse. Yet the slaughterhouse, these closed shops, the thousands of fines … they are all symptoms of a larger problem. If the newspapers really want to report what is going on, they shouldn’t be focusing on the fact that Syrians had been sold rotten meat. They should focus instead on what has driven so many Syrians to knowingly sell rotten meat to their fellow citizens. What are the circumstances that would lead to someone choosing such a disgusting, thoughtless and illegal form of earning money?
Newspapers like Tishreen are constantly reporting the rising crime. We read almost daily about crimes being committed across the country for trivial sums of money. Reported in that same January 26, 2009 edition of Tishreen was the murder of a young man in Aleppo. This young man had been murdered so that his killer could get away with less than five thousand pounds [approximately 100 USD].
In Homs, five men dressed as police officers and used their apparent authority to enter citizens’ homes and rob them. They were arrested in the act of robbing a citizen’s home and assaulting the man’s wife.
In Damascus, men claiming to be members of a security patrol handcuffed a man coming out of a money exchange office, then took from him the nine million pounds [approximately 195,000 USD] he had on him. One of these men was later arrested.
These tales of increased crime should not be seen in isolation. They are part of a growing trend, an increase in crime that has roots in larger social and economic problems that plague Syria today. As citizens, it is not enough to do as Tishreen does, and shake our heads at these stories and then move on. We must, for the sake of our country’s future, consider what has caused this increase in crime, and treat not only the symptoms of the problem, but also the problem itself.
Such illegal slaughterhouses are only one example of the dangerous misrepresentation of food sold to consumers throughout Syria. The same edition of Tishreen had an article reporting that patrols by the Health Department had recently confiscated more than 83 dead cows and sheep, 94 kg of chicken meat, and large quantities of other, expired food items, being sold in shops in Deir al-Zur. Among the confiscated items were cans of food intended for children. The Health Department had been forced to shut down over 100 shops, and had issued over 2000 fines for violations against the health and hygiene codes.
The newspapers report numbers like this without going any deeper into the issue. For Tishreen, the story was the raid on the slaughterhouse. Yet the slaughterhouse, these closed shops, the thousands of fines … they are all symptoms of a larger problem. If the newspapers really want to report what is going on, they shouldn’t be focusing on the fact that Syrians had been sold rotten meat. They should focus instead on what has driven so many Syrians to knowingly sell rotten meat to their fellow citizens. What are the circumstances that would lead to someone choosing such a disgusting, thoughtless and illegal form of earning money?
Newspapers like Tishreen are constantly reporting the rising crime. We read almost daily about crimes being committed across the country for trivial sums of money. Reported in that same January 26, 2009 edition of Tishreen was the murder of a young man in Aleppo. This young man had been murdered so that his killer could get away with less than five thousand pounds [approximately 100 USD].
In Homs, five men dressed as police officers and used their apparent authority to enter citizens’ homes and rob them. They were arrested in the act of robbing a citizen’s home and assaulting the man’s wife.
In Damascus, men claiming to be members of a security patrol handcuffed a man coming out of a money exchange office, then took from him the nine million pounds [approximately 195,000 USD] he had on him. One of these men was later arrested.
These tales of increased crime should not be seen in isolation. They are part of a growing trend, an increase in crime that has roots in larger social and economic problems that plague Syria today. As citizens, it is not enough to do as Tishreen does, and shake our heads at these stories and then move on. We must, for the sake of our country’s future, consider what has caused this increase in crime, and treat not only the symptoms of the problem, but also the problem itself.
Some of the names of our contributors have been changed to protect their identity. The names of people interviewed have also been changed. The opinions expressed in our regional pieces reflect the beliefs of their writers, and do not necessarily reflect the beliefs or opinions of the Tharwa Foundation and its members.
