“More than two years after the beginning of the popular uprising against the regime of Bashar al-Assad, the Syrians’ legitimate claims are co-existing with those of extremists who seek to impose their own agendas by taking advantage of the chaos and power vacuum. The work performed by activists who attempt to restore normality to the “liberated” zones, rebuild schools and hospitals, put on cultural and artistic activities and invest in the values of justice and respect for fundamental rights, from the local to the micro-local, is continuing to be done, but with ever increasing difficulty. The voices of these activists, which are being drowned out more and more by geopolitical discourses, are a key to understanding the internal dynamics of a country that has locked off the outside world for decades and the own Syrian people’s hopes for the future. Within an environment of increasing militarization, it is crucial to listen to those who are still committed to non-violence and initiatives for civil disobedience, using creativity to rebuild and resist the regime’s attacks and the rest of the world’s indifference amid the chaos. At this session, we will see several examples of the expressions of this everyday resistance in the documentary archives offered by the Syria Untold project.”

Introduction by Leila Nachawati on her presentation at Casa Árabe.

Free entry until the event’s capacity is reached.
 

Leila Nachawati

A Spanish-Syrian human rights activist and a specialist in citizen participation and communication in repressive contexts, Ms. Nachawati is a co-founder of the web portal Syria Untold. She is a professor of Communication at Universidad Carlos III in Madrid, where she is completing her doctorate. Focused on the region of the Middle East and North Africa, she is collaborating on different projects and with different media such as Eldiario.es, Global Voices Online, Global Voices Advocacy, El Mundo and Al Jazeera English. Holder of a degree in Arabic and English Language and Literature, she also holds a Master’s degree in International Cooperation.
 

Syria Untold

A web portal founded by a group of Syrian journalists, writers and designers in the form of a digital archive and content aggregator associated with the civil movement and creative resistance in Syria.

Zaytoun Video Game

Zaytoun, a boy from the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk, south of Damascus, is the main character in this video game which shows the adventures of this youth exiled for the second time after the Syrian regime bombs his neighborhood. Through Zaytoun players get a closer look at the historical context and current situation in both Syrian and Palestine. The neighborhood of Yarmouk, from which he leaves, became a place for Syrians coming from other parts of the city to find refuge after the beginning of the uprising against Bashar al-Assad’s regime, right in the midst of a campaign for the persecution and murder of demonstrators. It was a showing of solidarity by a large part of the Palestinian-Syrians to the rest of the population, solidarity which ended up turning them into a target for the regime, as well.