On February 17th, we had an incident happened in Syria that sort of encapsulates why the Syrian people are rebelling. On that day, a minor traffic accident– a person who is the son of a shop owner in a traditional district in Syria, one of the bazaars called Midhat Pasha– he was driving his car. And apparently he parked in the wrong zone. Or he honked his horn.
So one of the security people, one of the traffic cops, in fact, in the area sort of yelled at him and sort of slapped him. And the person came out of his car and become talking to the security officer and tell him, “Why did you do that? I mean, I´m, you know.” And they exchange some words. And then the security officer began beating him with a baton. And the next thing you know, there was a crowd of 100 and 200 and 1,500 people gathered around the security officer and demanding that he apologizes and the security people ended up dragging the person to the local station. The crowd followed them and they began shouting outside the police station, “The Syrian people will not be humiliated.”
This was the first time something like that was ever said in Syria. But that word, “The Syrian people will not be humiliated,” was really the key to it all. The incident was contained. The Minister of Interior came. He managed to convince the young person to come out and he apologized to him in front of the entire crowd.
And sort of, the incident was contained. But it was a spark. It showed you and it showed the Syrian people that they can actually scare the regime, that they can actually, despite their own fears of the security people, that the security people can be equally terrified when they go– when they see a huge crowd gather. And at the same time, the cries, the spontaneous cries with, “The Syrian people will not be humiliated,” this is what this revolution is all about.
So the next day, 50,000 people came to the street. And the next day, 200,000 people. And, you know, they, the government, central government ended up sending the army units and whatever, and that´s really what started out the entire revolution in Syria. The next thing you know, it wasn´t only one province on one city. It was all over the country.
Ammar Abdulhamid is a Syrian human rights activist who in 2003 founded the Tharwa Foundation, a grassroots organization that enlists local activists and citizen journalists to document conditions in Syria. In response to his activities, the Syrian government subjected Abdulhamid to repeat interrogation and threats. In September 2005, he and his family were forced into exile in the United States. From his home in Maryland, Abdulhamid remains one of the leading bloggers and commentators on events in Syria through the Syrian Revolution Digest.
Follow Ammar Ahbdulhamid on Twitter @Tharwacolamus and on his blog, Syrian Revolution Digest.
The Syrian Arab Republic originated as a secular, socialist state dominated by the Ba’ath party, an Arab nationalist movement. The state has since evolved into an autocracy headed by a single family and dominated by members of the minority Alawite sect, a branch of Shia Islam.
The Ba’ath Party took power in Syria in a series of coups d’état in the 1960s and 1970s. One of the leaders of those coups, Hafez al-Assad, became president in 1971 and led the country until his death in 2000. Under Assad, Alawites assumed control over the state security forces. In 1982, Assad’s forces stormed the city of Hama to brutally suppress a Sunni rebellion, killing thousands of civilians.
Following the death of Hafez al-Assad, his son, Bashar al-Assad, was elected president by a referendum in which he ran unopposed, officially garnering 97 percent of the vote. He was reelected in 2007, again with 97 percent of the vote.
The Syrian government is one of the world’s most brutal and restrictive. From 1963 to 2011, the government operated under an “Emergency Law,” which suspended many constitutional protections of civil liberties. The government continues to use arbitrary detention and torture against political opponents, and operates through an extensive internal security apparatus, including secret police. The government controls most of the country’s media outlets, and access to the Internet is permitted only through state-operated servers. The minority Kurdish population has been continually discriminated against and repressed.
Influenced by movements in Egypt and Tunisia, large opposition protests took place across Syria in 2011. The government responded with a harsh crackdown. Security forces fired on protestors, killing thousands. The crackdown led the Arab League to suspend Syria’s membership. The Assad regime attempted to appease dissenters through a series of low-level and largely inconsequential reforms in 2011 and 2012. However, the conflict has escalated into full-fledged civil war with both liberal and Islamic militias being formed to fight against the Assad regime. The Assad regime has continued to attempt to defeat the opposition using air strikes and heavy artillery to attack rebel-held neighborhoods. Freedoms of association, assembly, and the press were restricted even further as the government attempted to quell the uprising. Over a million people have been either internally displaced or fled the country as refugees.
In the summer of 2013, it was confirmed that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons to attack civilians. Over 600 people were killed in one such attack in the Ghouta suburb of Damascus using a nerve agent confirmed to be sarin. The Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons drew international attention and resulted in a renewed international focus on the nation and its civil conflict.
Freedom House rates Syria as “not free” noting that conditions even prior to the 2011 uprising and subsequent civil war were, at best, abysmal. It earned the worst possible ratings of seven in both the political rights and civil liberties categories. Conditions since the 2011 uprising have only deteriorated, and civil freedoms are restricted under the fear of violence. Freedom House has also expressed concern over rising sectarian tensions and massive displacement.