The Communist labor Party ( ''Hizb Al-'Amal Al-Shuyu'iy'') is a

Syria Syria, officially the Syrian Arab Republic, is a country in West Asia located in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Levant. It borders the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Turkey to Syria–Turkey border, the north, Iraq to Iraq–Syria border, t ...

communist Communism () is a sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered on common ownership of the means of production, di ...

party active in the 1980s and early 1990s. The party, a Marxist–Leninist splinter group from the

Syrian Communist Party The Syrian Communist Party () was a political party in Syria founded in 1944 as a division of the Syrian–Lebanese Communist Party, which later split into the Syrian Communist Party and the Lebanese Communist Party. In 1972, it became a memb ...

, was first formed in August 1976 as the "League for Communist Action," and was renamed to "Syrian communist Action Party" on 6 August 1981.The party, banned by the Ba'athist government since its establishment, was victim to a number of crackdowns, where 200 of its members were arrested in 1986 alone. 21 members were sentenced by the Supreme State Security Court for "membership in a secret organization created to change the economic or social structure of the state".

Amnesty International Amnesty International (also referred to as Amnesty or AI) is an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organization says that it has more than ten million members a ...

protested on behalf of the prisoners. The party continued to secretly distribute its publications–''ar-Raya al-Hamra'a'' ("''The Red Banner''"), ''ash-Shyu'i'' ("''The Communist''"), ''al-Brulitari'' ("''The Proletarian''")–until 1991. On 6 August 2003, the party announced its return to the political scene in a statement, followed by a new publication called ''al-An'' ("''Now''"). The party is led by Fateh Jamous, who was imprisoned between 1982 and 2000. He was again arrested in 2006. The party worked with a

Palestinian Palestinians () are an Arab ethnonational group native to the Levantine region of Palestine. *: "Palestine was part of the first wave of conquest following Muhammad's death in 632 CE; Jerusalem fell to the Caliph Umar in 638. The indigenous p ...

dissident group, called the

Palestinian Popular Committees The Palestinian Popular Committees () was a Palestinian movement, founded in 1983. The movement emerged mainly amongst youths in the Yarmouk refugee camp in Damascus, Syria, after a split away from the Palestine Liberation Organization The ...

, in the Yarmouk refugee camp in

Damascus Damascus ( , ; ) is the capital and List of largest cities in the Levant region by population, largest city of Syria. It is the oldest capital in the world and, according to some, the fourth Holiest sites in Islam, holiest city in Islam. Kno ...

. The group was founded in 1983. The Palestinian Popular Committees were disbanded in 1985, as a campaign of arrests was launched against the Syrian party. One of the sentenced activists of the party, Tuhama Mahmoud Ma'rouf, received a suspended sentence in 1995, only to be rearrested and ordered to begin serving her sentence in 2010 for unknown reasons. In February 2011, she began a hunger strike protesting the conditions of her detainment at Adra prison. She was released on 20 June of that year in a mass presidential amnesty for political dissidents. Since the beginning of the Syrian Civil War, the party has aligned itself with the

Syrian Opposition Syrians () are the majority inhabitants of Syria, indigenous to the Levant, most of whom have Arabic, especially its Levantine and Mesopotamian dialects, as a mother tongue. The cultural and linguistic heritage of the Syrian people is a blend ...

, operating within its territory and political system. In early 2018, the party condemned the

Turkish military operation in Afrin Operation Olive Branch () was an invasion by the Turkish Armed Forces and Syrian National Army (SNA) in the Kurdish-majority Afrin District of northwest Syria, against the People's Protection Units (YPG) of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). ...

References

External links

Communist Labour Party homepage
{{Syrian political parties 1976 establishments in Syria Banned communist parties Banned political parties in Syria Communist parties in Syria Political parties established in 1976 Political parties in Syria Syrian opposition groups