By Rachel Pulfer
President, Journalists for Human Rights
It’s midday in Toronto, December 2024. I’m watching the footage of a river of cars. Thousands of Syrians are making their way back to Syria from Turkey. For most, it is the first time in years.
These are the moments that so many across the Syrian diaspora have dreamed of for so long.
As of December 8th, 2024, the regime of Bashar al-Assad is over. Assad has fled to Russia, tasting the pain of exile for the first time — the pain his regime inflicted on so many of its people for so long.
Assad’s cruel repression of Arab Spring protests in 2011 sparked a civil war that, even by the horrific standards of war in the 21st century, has been extraordinary in its human costs.
Over 400,000 Syrians lost their lives. More than half the population – 14 million people – fled in exile, undertaking precarious voyages by land and sea to take up residence in countries from Germany to Canada. There were horror stories: the tiny body of Alan Kurdi, drowned on the beach as his family attempted to flee Syria for Canada. There were success stories: Tareq Hadhad and his family’s remarkable success in relocating the family chocolate business from Damascus to Nova Scotia.
But too often, countries hosting Syrians made it painfully clear the Syrians were not that welcome.
Left behind was a regime so brutal, it gassed its own children. Even the mundanity of daily life required navigating a tightrope of fear. Under Assad, the mere act of going into an office to get a passport renewed or a birth certificate certified became an opportunity for interrogation, disappearance or worse.
And yet today, this most brutal of 21st century dictatorships is gone.
Today, Syrians can breathe free air, for the first time in generations. Today, Syrians can write WhatsApp messages to one another without having to resort to some kind of crazy code. Today, a generation that has never known life without fear can call one another by their real names, not some assumed name designed to throw off the security services.
Today, Syrians can dare to hope for a better future. And they can think about going back.
It’s a day that has also been long-anticipated at Journalists for Human Rights.
For almost ten years, JHR has been working towards this moment.
In 2015, I’d had the good fortune to hire Zein Almoghraby, a Syrian human rights lawyer and media development practitioner. Recently arrived from the region himself, Almoghraby was determined to convince me that there was a future for media development in Syria, and that we needed to be part of it. He conducted a needs assessment among Syrian journalists, evaluating how media development could be helpful to them in exile.
The outlook was not promising. On the Press Freedom Index we usually consult before intervening, Syria was dead last. But the journalists Almoghraby contacted gave a new definition to the word “determination.” They described how they were setting up newsrooms in exile, in Turkey and elsewhere.
On the basis of this feedback, JHR secured support for a small program. I remained skeptical about its chances.
Nothing prepared me for the hope, optimism and extraordinary courage I encountered on going to Turkey, in February 2017, to launch it.
On that trip, I met people like Tammam Hazem. A stringer for several news services, Hazem was based in Gaziantep, a Turkish city a half hour from Aleppo. He took his life in his hands every time he crossed the border to report. Hazem eventually became the director of JHR’s programming for Syrian journalists in exile. He’s helped build a network that, among other major achievements, forced the Assad government to build a humanitarian corridor to a besieged refugee camp in which people were dying for lack of food and water.
I also met Reem al-Halabi. At 27 years old, Reem had literally taken a bullet for journalism. Gunmen from the Assad regime shot her while she covered a protest in Aleppo in 2011. After recovering, she’d also relocated to Gaziantep.
As al-Halabi toured me around the offices of Nasaem Souria, her TV and radio station, I met a group of journalists doing a live show on the mental health impacts of the siege of Aleppo. Just doing this risked retribution from the Assad regime. I marvelled at these journalists’ courage, their care for one another and for the future of their country. And I realized that there was no choice but to support them —with everything we had.
These journalists represented the best of their country, and they were determined for it to have a better future.
Ever since then, Journalists for Human Rights has worked in solidarity with these journalists. Their stories have ranged the gamut from an investigation spotlighting the scourge of honour killing that led to the Syrian Islamic Council issuing a fatwa against the practice, to stories highlighting the rights of Arabic-speaking Syrian youth to access education in their own language.
And now that work has a new purpose – helping build a new Syria.
The challenges are enormous. At time of writing, it is unclear who is going to lead Syria, and what form of government that leadership is likely to take. Many mutter darkly of a new jihadi future, one of Assad-style authoritarianism in a more Islamist guise, in which the rights of women and minorities are radically curtailed. Others speak of the danger that interventionist powers represent: Iran, Russia, the United States and Israel all want to have a stake in determining Syria’s future, and none of these powers are likely to sit on the sidelines (at time of writing, Israeli tanks were 20 minutes from Damascus.) Others point to early outreach from the leaders of Ha’yat Tahrir al-Sham or HTS, the Islamist group that toppled Assad, to Christian and Kurdish minorities in Aleppo and elsewhere as evidence a new day is dawning, one grounded in human rights and freedoms for all.
There is one thing I know for certain. Syrians created this opportunity for themselves. They didn’t rely on other forces or powers. They have dreamed of this day, they created it, and they deserve to savour it. They deserve to dream, with optimism, of the future they want in the country they love so much. And they deserve all of our support.
Hazem wrote to me yesterday, “This marks a transformative moment in the lives of all Syrians, closing the chapter on 61 years of dictatorship. It is comparable to the fall of Ceaușescu in Eastern Europe—a moment so profound that it challenges the mind to comprehend, shaped as it is by decades of entrenched oppression. There are those who believe that the dreams of nations rise from the ashes, renewed and ready to flourish. Indeed, this is what has transpired, as if a long-awaited dream has been realized—this time, without bloodshed. It is a defining moment for every Syrian, a moment that feels like a collective rebirth.”
It is by walking alongside our Syrian friends in this moment, by providing them with as much support that we can muster, that we are more likely to see a sustained future in Syria of freedom and human rights for all.
That’s a goal worth fighting for, and we at JHR will continue to do our part.
This Human Rights Day, join us in supporting Syrian journalists worldwide as they work towards a future in Syria that is finally – finally – free from fear.
