March 15, 2011: The silence is broken

Like the other Arab revolts, Syria’s Arab Spring occurred spontaneously and from the beginning was committed to nonviolence and peaceful protest. 

The core political grievances and aspirations were the same as those who had rebelled against oppression elsewhere: Syrian protesters were calling for dignity, freedom and social justice.

By 2011, the Assad family had been in place for 41 years and was arguably the most brutally repressive regime in the Arab world.

Bashar had inherited the presidency when his father Hafez died more than 10 years before and many Syrians, dissatisfied with the widespread corruption and brutality of his father’s regime, had hoped that his western-educated son would usher in much needed reforms.

Alas, the Syrian people’s hopes had been crushed as the government led by Bashar Assad turned out to be just as brutal, corrupt and self-serving as his father’s had been.

Inspired by the success of the uprisings in Libya and Tunisia, the young people of Syria broke the oppressive silence they had been forced into keeping for their entire lives and suddenly Assad found himself face to face with a legitimacy crisis of unprecedented scale and proportion.

Pro-democracy protests started in earnest on that fateful Tuesday (March 15, 2011), as a group of 200 young protesters, mostly students, gathered in the Syrian capital of Damascus to demand reforms in what activists had titled a ’Day of Rage’.

Social media was already playing a major role in the Arab Spring and a Facebook group calling itself “The Syrian Revolution 2011” had already garnered more than 41,000 fans by this time.

Syrian Twitter users had also begun tweeting for the world to pay attention and video footage of the newly birthed protests recorded by activists with cell phones began being uploaded to YouTube. 

Witnesses had said that the first gathering to take place in Damascus was relatively small, but the fact that it had happened was more significant than the head count in a country where anti-government protests were, for very good reasons, exceedingly rare. 

Rights groups and activists blamed the low turnout on an internet crackdown by the government but did not let the initial numbers dampen their enthusiasm. 

Shortly after the demonstration in Damascus on March 15, ‘cyber activist’ Malath Aumran had told the The Washington Post that protesters would be gathering again in the afternoon.

Some of the complaints being voiced against Assad and his government were the measures being used by the regime to repress the people including the tightening of internet censorship, expanded use of travel bans and especially the arbitrary arresting of political prisoners.

Two hundred websites were inaccessible in Syria at the time and a law had been put into place in 2007 that required internet cafes to spy on their customers and record all the comments being posted on chat forums.

As a show of being progressive, Assad had permitted the existence of radio stations playing western pop music but websites such as Wikipedia, YouTube and Facebook had been blocked in 2008 and then subsequently restricted and/or closely monitored even after the ban was lifted in February 2010. 

The regime had eyes and spies everywhere. AFP had already reported that a teenage girl had been arrested and convicted of espionage and sentenced to five years in prison for political poetry she had written on her blog.

Assad had also expanded the use of travel bans against dissidents to prevent them from going abroad, a practice that was illegal under international law.

In 2007, the New York Times had reported the arrest of 30 political prisoners in Syria; but by March of 2011 the number of Syrians who had been arbitrarily arrested and imprisoned, or had simply disappeared, had grown exponentially.

Prior to the March 15 protest, Foreign Policy Magazine had anticipated an impending uprising in Syria and had analyzed the likelihood of the Assad regime using force against protesters if pro-democracy demonstrations began:

“Bashar al-Assad’s threat to use force against protesters would be more plausible than Tunisia’s or Egypt’s were. 

“So, unlike in Tunisia and Egypt, where a professionally trained military tended to play an independent role, the regime and its loyal forces have been able to deter all but the most resolute and fearless oppositional activists."

In spite of the warning flags of what Assad’s response was likely to be, 200 young protesters hit the streets of Damascus six years ago today hoping to be the spark that would ignite a revolutionary fire that would bring freedom and democracy to Syria.

With hearts full of courage and optimism that they could be the catalyst for positive change, those early protesters were inspired by those who had gone before them such as Malcolm X who once said; 

“If you’re not ready to die for it, put the word ‘freedom’ out of your vocabulary.”

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