The couple last days, I have been so busy and I have met with a lot of people who are interested in knowing much more about my country of origin, Syria. I met with a western friend and we started to talk about the Internet in Syria. When I mentioned some banned websites in the country, such as Facebook, blogspot, and youtube as well as dozens of Syrian dissidents’ websites, he replied with surprise, ” how can that happen, what about the tourists and the foreign students in Syria? Can’t they use Facebook and youtube?”

His question is a 100% right but it was funny to me.” If the Syrian regime doesn’t care about its citizens, why should it care about the foreigners?” I asked myself.
But really, you might ask yourself why a strong regime like the one in Syrian should really care about blocking a blog or facebook or any website?

I have answered this question when speaking with a reporter from The New York Times . I told the reporter, “They [the regime] are strong on one hand, but on another they are so weak they are afraid of an Internet cafe.” So how they are strong and weak at the same time?

Before Assad inherited his power, we all knew him as the president of the “Syrian computer society,” an NGO aiming to develop internet service in the country. This was back when his father was still alive and was preparing his son to inherit the power. That tricked all of us — even the west policy makers were tricked — and Assad was assumed to be a “a part of the internet generation” in the eyes of the western policy makers, quite unlike his father the General. This view of Assad made the western world willing to overlook the unconstitutionality of Assad’s coming to power, because everyone believed he would be different from his father.

In 1970, Assad the Senior took power in a coup d’état. Gradually, he started to crack down on all the Syrian groups who opposed his regime. Many Syrian dissents were arrested and kept in jail for ten or even twenty years. Others were killed. All the unions were dissolved by Assad’s orders, and their leaders were often arrested. Assad established new puppet unions, which belonged to the ruling Baath party. During this time, a person could be arrested merely for reading a newsletter written by one of the Syrian opposition group.

By the year 2000, only Syrian doctors, lawyers and engineers were allowed to use the dial-up internet service in the country. A year later, the internet usage was opened up to any citizen who might want it, but they were required to fill out an “application” which required their names, their fathers’ names, mothers’ name, addresses and even the password to their private emails!

The internet fees were expensive compared to the income of an average citizen. Yet in spite of the fees, the number of the internet users in 2005 had reached five hundred thousand, according to the Human Rights Watch.

The Syrians thirsted for this service, after 30 years of bans and arrests and the repression of all the other voices. Syrian citizens were enthusiastic to know what was going on in their own country and finally they were able to do so, through access to digital foreign papers that were banned inside Syria. It was ironic, that the only way to learn news about Syria was to turn to papers written outside of Syria, but unfortunately, that had been the case for some time. It’s worth mentioning that before the internet became widespread, people in the areas bordering Israel had tried to watch the Israeli Arabic news broadcasting to get a non-government sponsored view of their own country, until Assad the elder had the channel blocked inside Syria.

After internet usage was opened to the public, the Syrian regime started its campaign against the internet and internet users. Many bloggers were arrested. Others were arrested merely for receiving an electronic newsletter in their email. A lot of newspapers were blocked, and youtube and Facebook were soon to follow.

In 1970, Assad the elder seized power. In 2000, Assad junior inherited the power from his father. The father blocked any voice not sponsored by the government and arrested all the democracy activists, and the son followed in his footsteps, arresting activists and the new virtual online activists. The Syrian groups who had been arrested during the time of the father started to appear online; for example, on Facebook we started to see a lot of Syrian virtual groups supporting causes considered taboo in Syria. Groups of Syrian activists began talking about civil marriage in Syria, others calling for democracy in the country, and a group of Israeli and Syrian activists even began issuing a joint call for peace between Syrian and Israel. All of these things were unspoken of inside Syria. The voices that had been banned in reality, made silent by the threat of the strong military and security forces of the regime, were expressed online, in droves. In 2007, Syrians had been forced to affirm Assad’s claim to power at the ballot boxes, but online, those claims were refuted and people spoke out against Assad freely. This why a regime like The Syrian could be afraid from a blog.

However, I assured my western friend, the blocking of Facebook and Youtube and such sites was entirely aimed at Syrian citizens. As proof of this, I told him about the situation with Wikipedia. Wikipedia Arabic is banned in Syria, alongside other social sites. Wikipedia English is still available, though, for the benefit of the tourists and foreign students. The regime is not worried about Wikipedia English – Syrian citizens are not expected to know English and thus will not take advantage of this unblocked site. So when he goes to Syria, I assured him, he may not be able to check his Facebook status, but at least he can still use Wikipedia, as long as he only uses the English site!

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To: Secretary of State

Dear Mrs. Hillary Clinton,

We write to you to voice our sincere concern for the degradation of the state of human rights in Syria. This deterioration of freedom and human rights is the result of systematic abuses by the Syrian regime which are illegal and un-constitutional in Syria, and concurrently, in violation of the International Declaration of Human Rights and other international treaties that have been signed by the Syrian regime. Syria has witnessed, particularly during the last six months, a dangerous deterioration of human rights to a level that has not been seen since the early 1980s. On the ground, we are noticing a steady increase in crackdowns on basic human freedoms and those who defend those freedoms.

Learn more and Join the Petition - http://www.petitiononline.com/forsyria/petition.html

Three years ago my friends and I would never have guessed that our destiny will take some of us to prison and others to exile. We were a small group of young men and women who were upset by the deteriorating living conditions in the country. We dreamed of having the basic civil rights that so many people enjoy in other countries, of entering the University campus without having agents of the secret police staring at us and watching our every move, of attending classes without having them monitor our words and questions, and without having to watch helplessly as they arrest some of us on some meaningless charge, just as happened with our colleagues, Mesud Hamid, on Thursday, 24-7-2003.

On that day, Mesud was dragged out of the lecture hall at the university in front of all other students while taking an exam. Secret police agents walked into the hall, dragged him by his hair and walked out as everyone watched unable to object, lest they, too, be arrested. His crime was that he dared take a picture of the security agents while they beat on some kids demonstrating peacefully in Damascus!

We dreamed of a country that has normal and good relations with its neighbors and that did not support terrorist organizations and extremist groups, a country that paid more attention to developing its infrastructure and its economy, than to external adventures. These small dreams were translated to action when we got together in 23005 and founded a small secular group at the university called Youth for Syria. Soon after that, however, the dreams into nightmares and the dreamers were quickly hauled away and became unwilling residents of the infamous Saydnaya military prison, west of Damascus, never to be heard from since. To this day, we don’t know if they are alive or dead.

To make matters worse, on July 5, 2008, a massacre against the inmates took place at the Saydnaya Prison. According to Human Rights Watch 25 prisoners were killed when security guards opened fire on the unarmed prisoners, who rioted in protest of poor living conditions and continuous physical and mental abuse by the guards. An inmate managed to break the story when he managed to get hold of a cell phone and used it to contact human rights activists and media outlets, including CNN and BBC correspondents. Shortly after that, troops from Damascus stormed the prison and regained control. We don’t know how many more people died. We don’t know anything about the fate of my arrested friends, eight of whom are among the inmates.

They are:

• Tareq Al Ghorani: A 23 years old engineering student, sentenced to 7 years.
• Maher Isber: A 26 year-old hairstylist, sentenced to 7 years.
• Husam Mulhim: A student and a poet attending law school. He was 22 years of age when arrested and sentenced to 5 years in prison.
• Omar Albudllah: A Student of philosophy at Damascus University. He was 21 years of age when arrested and sentenced to five years in prison.
• Diab Serieh: A blogger and a part time student.  He was 21 when arrested and sentenced for five years in prison.
• Allam Fakhour: A student and an artist at the art faculty of Damascus University working on his master degree in fine arts. He was 27 years old when arrested and sentenced to five years in prison.
• Ayham Saqer:  A student and a cartoonist. He was 29 years old when arrested and sentenced for five years in prison.
• Ali Ali: A business administration student at Damascus University.  He was 22 years old when arrested and subsequently released after one year.

By arresting this group of students the authorities created a climate of terror on campus and intimidated the huge support that pro-democracy students have there. Meanwhile, however, and with official approval, the activities of Islamist and Baathist groups armed with their usual anti-western rhetoric were allowed to flourish. This modus operandi became the norm throughout the university scene in Syria: anti-Western students were allowed to speak and lecture freely while pro-democracy students were arrested and jailed. Speaking about democracy and freedom led to expulsion of many students, effectively ruining their future.

In one specific instance, I still remember clearly when a perplexed father of one of the arrested students asked a high-ranking security officer why they were arresting these pro-democracy students instead of encouraging them. The father was expressing his bewilderment at such a practice because he knew that most of these students had diverse backgrounds and came from different Syrian sects and religious minorities, by encouraging them, he argued, the authorities will help them promote pluralism, tolerance and moderation throughout the country. Some were Christians, others were Druze, Alawite and Sunni, they were indeed a small sample which truly represented the social, religious and ethnic diversity in Syria. Asking the officer in charge, the father said “do you want radical elements or Al Qaeda sympathizers instead of these kids?” The officer replied “these students are more dangerous than Al Qaeda exactly because they come from all these sects!!”

Months after the arrest of this group, I founded with other friends another youth group which we called Syrian Youth for Justice. Our aim was to defend our friends in prison and talk about them and revive the pro-democracy activities at the University. But once again, our dream became a nightmare. Six members of the secret policy, known as the mukhabarat, with their handguns in hand bolted into an internet café at 2:00AM in the morning where my friend and I were surfing the net, and in front of all customers, they proceeded to handcuff and blindfold us before dragging us out of the café, throwing us in their car, and driving us away. They beat us all along the road to their station.

At the first they threw me in a windowless solitary confinement cell about half a meter wide and one and a half meter long. This happened on December 14th 2006. I spent a week in solitary confinement and was transferred then to a larger cell with other detainees. I heard the screams of prisoners every day while they were tortured and beaten. They beat us daily using many different tools and methods of torture. I thought a lot inside the prison about Christmas because I spent it there.  I was comparing between inside and outside, how the red lights is covering my neighborhood while the only red thing I saw inside in the prison were the guards’ eyes. How my family was setting up the Christmas tree while, in prison, the guards were setting up the torture tools.

I spent one month in jail. A short time comparing to other prisoners in Syria but to me they were the worst days of my life. I was released with my other friend and told to be a good citizen. Being a good citizen meant that if I ever got into trouble and violated traffic laws, for instance, all I had to do was call on one of the security agents that interrogated me, and they would help me “fix” it. In exchange, they will occasionally ask me for information pertaining to the activities of my friends and colleagues. Being a good citizen meant becoming an informant to the authorities, not obeying the law.
Upon my release, my life changed, my dreams turned nightmares and fear filled my life. I started to shiver every time someone would knock at my door at night. I was terrified each time I saw someone walking behind me. It didn’t take me long before I realized that I simply cannot go on like that. I was 22 when I left the country and started my life in exile.

I first traveled to Jordan where I stayed for a month, then to Egypt where I stayed for three months, on to Lebanon where I stayed for a year and a half, before I finally made it to the States.

I was there in Lebanon, on May 7th 2008, when Hizbullah militias invaded Beirut and terrorized its inhabitants. The building where I lived was hit with an RBJ shell. A friend of mine from Syria called me at the time and said “come to Syria now it’s better for you to be jailed in Syria than be killed in Lebanon.” I replied “if I get killed here in Lebanon it will be fast and quick, in Syria if I go to jail I will be killed a thousand times”.

This is a brief description of what life in Syria is like today for a certain segment of its population, the segment that yearns for freedom, democracy, development and moderation. Many of my friends are still in prison, and no one knows if they are alive or dead. Their mothers are living a daily nightmare, wondering, expecting, dreading. They fear that one day they might wake up to find the bodies of their sons laid at their doorsteps.

This how the Syrian regime, which some refers to as “secular” and others as “moderate” and “engageable,” treats its young when they dare dream of a better Syria.

But I cannot really complain too much. I am one of the lucky ones who got away. I now have hope, because America itself has consented to become my new home. I would like to thank all the people who made this possible, who made it possible for me to walk safely in the streets without watching my back.

Ahed Alhendi, a human rights activist and ex-political prisoner, is a founding member of the unofficial youth movement, Syrian Youth for Justice. He will speak on a panel at the conference, Syria: Challenges and Opportunities for the New Administration

Thursday, March 26, 2009
10:30AM – 3:00PM

1015 15th Street, N.W.
6th Floor
Washington, DC 20005

Click here for more information.