Syrian citizens feel linked to a world in which democratic protests have overthrown autocratic leaders, writes TARA BAHRAMPOURin Beirut
WHEN SAMER, a university student in Damascus, joined in the largest anti-government demonstrations so far in the capital last Friday, he felt something he had never felt before.
It was not fear, although he was afraid in the first few seconds.
“After the first yelling, the first shout, you feel dignity,” says Samer (24), who like many protesters did not want his surname used for fear of reprisals.
“You feel that you are a real citizen, a real Syrian citizen.”
They are still a minority, but every day more Syrians are stepping out of their houses and into the streets, breaking the barrier of silence that has gripped them for decades. Many are young men, propelled as the young often are by adrenaline and bravado.
But in a deeper sense, they are ordinary people who say they feel linked for the first time to a wider world, one in which democracy movements in Tunisia and Egypt led to the departure of autocratic leaders, showing them that such things are possible.
For decades one of the Middle East’s most isolated societies, Syria has in recent years allowed its people access to the internet and satellite TV. Now, technology is playing a crucial role in their democracy movement – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Skype are helping them evade government detection as they communicate with one another and disseminate information.
Being in touch with so many fellow Syrians inside and outside the country has galvanised them in a way that eluded their parents’ generation. “I knew well about the arrests in the past years, but I couldn’t go to the streets by myself,” says Bahaa (25), an art student in the city of As Suwayda, who joined protests last week for the first time since they started.
After seeing YouTube footage of earlier demonstrations, he and his friends decided it was time to do more than just watch from the sidelines. “I was so happy,” he says, “because for the first time I was demanding my freedom.”
In countries caught up in the “Arab Spring”, single events have become catalysts for revolution.
In Tunisia it was the self- immolation of a distraught fruit-seller, in Egypt the beating to death of a young man arrested in an internet cafe, pictures of whose disfigured corpse went viral. In Syria, it was the arrest and torture of teenagers for writing anti-regime graffiti in the town of Daraa. Each time, the people involved became symbols of a society’s pent-up frustration.
But for Syrians, whose population includes Sunnis, Shia, Christians, Kurds and Druze, the thirst for revolution has been slower to take root, in part because of an appreciation for what the regime has given them: security in a region where sectarian violence has plagued their neighbours.
Syria’s leaders have exploited fears of sectarian strife, hanging up banners reading “security and stability” and now, in the face of protests, warning that greater freedoms will lead to civil strife as in Lebanon or Iraq.
When Bashar al-Assad (45) became president in 2000 after the death of his father, there were hopes that he would usher in political reforms, but he has been criticised by rights groups for continuing his father’s repressive tactics and crushing dissent in this country of 22 million.
On Saturday, in response to protests, he promised the end to emergency laws that have allowed the state to arrest people without charge and control dissent for the past five decades. But the news came with the caveat that protests would not be tolerated once the laws were lifted and it was followed by more protests.
Many Syrians, and experts, say Assad could have prevented the explosion of rage by making democratic concessions early on rather than firing at protesters.
More than 200 people have been killed in the protests, according to human rights organisations.
“He started by shooting at people, so people have nothing more to be afraid of,” says a 30- year-old Syrian activist who recently fled to Beirut to escape arrest in Damascus.
“People got killed, their neighbours got killed, their friends, their family members got killed. What else could happen?”
At the same time, in a country where the government survived in part by isolating people, Assad helped to make the uprisings possible by legalising the internet and satellite television, according to Joshua Landis, director of the centre for Middle Eastern studies at the University of Oklahoma.
“He was trying to modernise his country and, to modernise the country meant engaging the world and that, ultimately, undermined this isolation,” Landis says. So did Bush administration programmes to bring technology to Syria and other states through organisations such as the National Democratic institute and the International Republican Institute, Landis adds.
Such technology allows Rami Nakhla (28) to spend his days holed up in an east Beirut apartment where he collects accounts from Syrians via Skype and passes them to international news organisations that were expelled from Syria.
A political science student and journalist who fled Syria in January, he gives protesters tips such as planning escape routes and using a buddy system.
Nakhla sat hunched over a laptop this week with the recently arrived activist, both still in hiding from Syrian security forces who in the past have kidnapped Syrian dissidents on this side of the border.
Nakhla explains to one protester how to upload a video on to YouTube and exclaims over news coming in of women in one town demanding the release of their detained male relatives.
Even in areas that are rural and less connected, indignation seems to have trumped fear.
“There is a dramatic change in my village,” says a Syrian driver in Beirut, who recently visited his village in Ar Raqqah province, where he says residents have been emboldened by recent events.
“Before, people would sit in a cafe and they were careful because they would know there were pro-government people listening, but now everyone is talking freely, even though they know they are still listening.”
As in Egypt and Tunisia, Syrian protesters insist their movement is secular and grassroots.
“Nobody is leading us, nobody is making us go to the street,” says Alaa (24), an English student in As Suwayda who joined demonstrations last week.
“We are not moved by religion, we are moved by freedom, by our sense of humanity.” He plans to keep demonstrating. “Maybe I will get killed, maybe my brother will get killed,” he says, “but we will not stop.”
– (Washington Post service)