“After the first yelling, the first shout, you feel dignity,” said a university student, who like many protesters did not want his name 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 the house 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.
However, 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.
It is a world in which they no longer feel alone. For decades one of the Middle East most isolated societies, Syria has in recent years, allowed its people access to the Internet and satellite television.
Now, technology is playing a crucial role in their democracy movement, as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Skype help 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 galvanized them in a way that eluded their parents’ generation.
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 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.
Some reporters have compared these events to civil rights protests in the US when simple people such as Rosa Parks galvanized whole communities.
However, for Syrians, whose population includes Sunnis, Shiites, Christians, and others, 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 neighbors.
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 along the lines of Lebanon or Iraq.
Most Syrians have yet to join the protests, because they support the regime or they fear reprisals if the movement fails or chaos if it succeeds.
“Syrians are rightfully fearful that this call for peace and freedom is a chimera, a phantom, a mirage,” said Joshua Landis, director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Oklahoma.
Many Syrians, and experts, say the Syrian President 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 demonstrations, according to human rights organizations.
Tools of social media have allowed students to spend the day in their apartments, while at the same time informing the public at large, the political upheavals occurring in the streets.
Many analysts, point to these tools and the internet for keeping the revolution alive, because without them students in Bahrain, Libya, or Egypt, would never have felt empowered enough to protest against their government.
Copyright ⓒ Aju Press All rights reserved.