The social media played an important role in the whole Arab revolt, especially the Facebook. Twenty percent of Tunisians, they have their own Facebook account. Then you have one-fifth of the population they have their own Facebook account. This is why, when they set up a time for demonstration, 70,000 or 80,000, they show up. That’s reflected what’s happening in the virtual world, in the social media, reflected on the actual world. And this is the challenge because sometimes you see a lot of Facebook pages as fake Facebook pages or as fake Facebook groups, but how you put a link being actual world and being the technology.
The Facebook played a very important role in Tunisia and in Egypt as a main source to set the information to demonstrate against the [former Tunisian President Zine El Abidine] Ben Ali regime and the [Former Egyptian President Hosni] Mubarak regime. In Syria it was the main source of information of what’s going on in the country, because there is no other source of information. You cannot believe or rely on the state media, and you have very limited time in the Arab broadcasting. This is you have flow of information on the Facebook and in Twitter. And as I said before, it’s young societies. They are actually excellent in using this social media.
Every day, they learn something new. Every day, they use this social media with a professional way and prove that they will be able to capture, despite of all of these technologies which did not exist before in Syria or in Egypt, and very high expensive. But all of that, they are easy to learn things and use it just few minutes after they’re getting all of this instructions and instruments. The Facebook became a tool, of course, to organize protest in Egypt and in Tunisia. In Syria it became a tool of information, providing, disseminating information about what’s happened in different cities. And now all of this in Syria, in each city it has called something groups or tensipiyat [an Arabic word roughly meaning “people coming together with shared interests”], where the activists, they have a network, and they have a group on the Facebook.
In each city, each village, they have a group in the Facebook. And if you need to know the people being killed in this city or in this town, the much easier way, to go to their Facebook group. And I think that the Syrians became very active in this way as the Facebook became the main source of information. Ninety-five percent of the population doesn’t have access to the Internet. The number of the people that does have access to the Internet was increasing, and in the last event was increasing dramatically because the people, they want to know what’s going on in the country.
They cannot rely on the state media. And the only way, it’s the Facebook. And then you have to have Internet. And because the Internet is under the censorship of the Assad security forces, they relied more and more on the devices we sent to – it’s about Internet devices, where they have connected to the Internet through the satellite, not through the state servers.
Radwan Ziadeh is a Syrian dissident and democracy activist. He grew up in a middle class family in Damascus and became politically active after the death of President Hafez Assad in 2000. Remembering the struggles of his own family growing up, Ziadeh wanted to live in a free country and helped establish the Syrian Human Rights Association, a group dedicated to promoting human rights, in 2001.
Four years later, Ziadeh founded his own organization called the Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies. Through his center, Ziadeh acted as an international lobbyist for the cause of Syrian freedom. Speaking at venues like the United Nations Human Rights Council, Ziadeh raised awareness about the human rights abuses being committed by the Assad regime in Damascus. As Ziadeh intensified the spotlight on Syria, the government retaliated by placing a travel ban on his family, effectively imprisoning them in Syria, or stranding those traveling abroad in third countries. In 2007, Ziadeh fled Syria for the United States as the Assad government issued a warrant for his arrest.
Beginning in March 2011, the Syrian people revolted against President Bashar Assad, who had succeeded his father, challenging the government’s control over the country and resulting in a tense standoff between the remnants of the regime and diverse opposition forces. In 2012, Ziadeh seized the opportunity afforded him by the revolution and visited his homeland for the first time in five years. He continues to reside in the United States where he works through organizations like the Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies and the Syrian Center for Political and Strategic Studies to rebuild Syria into a free and democratic society.
Twitter: @radwanziadeh
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.