Homs: Shabiha impose royalties on Dablan merchants

Reporting by Mamoun Abu Mohamed; Translation by Yusra Ahmed

HOMS (Zaman Al Wasl)- Homs’s traders suffer of “Shabiha” and their practices, especially for those who want to re-open their shops in Dablan, due to the pressure from regime and Municipality.

A source told Zaman al-Wasl that members Shabiha militia had forced Dablan’s traders who want to re-open their shops to pay them “royalty” or allowing them to take whatever they want without paying. “If a trader tried to ask them to pay for their buy, they would show him all kinds of torture and assault”.

Moreover Shabiha have become organised gangs after the rebels left Homs, where they do whatever they want and drive their motorcycle anywhere without caring about people, Abo Yaman, an activist, reported.

Many traders and activists initiated an attempt to re-open markets in Homs, which have been closed since 2012, starting with Dablan Market, to spread the experience to other markets in Homs. They supported their initiatives with facebook pages to encourage people to help.

Homs’s municipality tried to show interest in the matter, so they help in cleaning some streets in Dablan and re-connecting electricity to some buildings, while the project’s initiators cleaned all Dablan’s neighborhood.

The municipality promised to improve the public services in the place. “However, traders kept suspicious and worried from repeating the disaster they went through three years ago when Shabiha stolen all their shops, especially with the news leak from the municipality about plan to demolish whole residential and trade complexes to establish Homs’s dream” the activist mentioned.

What increased the disastrous situation for Dablan’s trader, the notification they receive from the endowment Authority to pay rent for the last three years or the properties they rent from the authority would be sold in open auctions.

“Regime refuses to revive many areas especially in old Homs, despite they only need some work to be habitable, all what traders were told that their shops’ future is related to al-Waer’s truce, which has not been not been implemented yet.”