Late Monday, the prominent ousted Syrian opposition figure Michel Kilo passed away at the age of 81 at a hospital in Paris, the reason being a COVID-19 infection.
Kilo spent over 50 years of his life fighting the Assad regime as an intellectual and national figure, said the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces (SNC) in a statement. Nasser Al-Hariri, the president of the SNC, said Kilo’s death was a significant loss for Syria’s opposition. “My condolences to the free Syrian people, his family, and all his followers”, he tweeted.
A devoted Marxist, Kilo’s opposition deeds started in the 1980s when he had a conflicting stance on the trials of Muslim Brotherhood members by the regime of Hafez Al Assad.
In 2005, he was a crucial character in outlining the Damascus Declaration, a document that called for Syria’s steady transition to democracy from a one-party dictatorship.
The succeeding year, Kilo contracted another declaration, along with hundreds of other protuberant Syrian and Lebanese activists and intellectuals, calling for the normalization of relations between Syria and Lebanon.
Syria had dominated Lebanon for decades, including through a military occupation that only ended in 2005. The declarations led to Kilo’s second arrest and another three years in prison.
