We quickly assembled a production crew to cover this most pressing news story within the Arab Spring by interviewing both Syrian activists, Oula Alrifai (Abdulhamid) and her Stepfather, Ammar Abdulhamid. Both Oula and Ammar work tirelessly to spread awareness about the oppressive Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria. The support by Syrians in the US and the international community more broadly is a critical part in the movement for change in Syria. Our Producer and Guest Host, Erica Woods stepped in to host and produce this episode.
Oula Abdulhamid
Oula Abdulhamid, activist and dissident from Syria.
Ammar Abdulhamid is a Syrian-born human rights activist, dissident, and founder of the Tharwa Foundation.
A world away from her childhood home in Syria, Oula Alrifai watches YouTube footage of the revolution there, praying the friends and family she left behind survive the military barrage. A brief phone call to her grandmother in Syria reassures her. They chat about life’s mundane details — last night’s dinner, the weather — but never of the crowds protesting outside her grandmother’s front door and the military tanks that still surround her city.
“If we talk, we have to talk in code because there’s a revolution,” said Alrifai, a senior government and politics major. “Everything is monitored; the phones are monitored.”These check-up calls and cellphone videos from protesters on Syrian streets are the 25-year-old Alrifai’s only glimpse of life in Syria. The country’s dictatorial regime operates skewed news outlets, taps phone lines and does not hesitate to remove anyone who challenges its legitimacy, she said.
It’s this pervasive corruption that Alrifai said made her parents and her younger brother begin to protest years before a revolution erupted March 15. It’s also the reason this family of political asylees may never return to Syria — going back would be a death sentence, Alrifai said. She now supports her homeland from abroad. Since the first day of the revolution, she said she has spent every Saturday in Washington, rallying support for Syria by day and lighting candles for the country’s martyrs at night.
But Alrifai said she would sacrifice anything to stand alongside her countrymen instead of campaigning overseas.
What are the lessons to be learned from the waves of democratic uprisings in the Middle East? Will they encourage similar movements elsewhere? How can these gains be consolidated?
Oula Alrifai (Abdulhamid)
Syrian Democracy Activist and Political Asylum Refugee
Oula Alrifai and her family are political refugees from Syria. Since the revolution started in Syria , they have been deeply involved in political protest particularly through social media – spreading the word both within and outside Syria, and keeping protesters motivated. Oula is currently a university student majoring in Political Science and International Relations. In 2009, she co-hosted and organized “The First Step”, a breakthrough academic television show that focused on promoting democracy, development, and stability in the Middle East. She has also worked at The United States Institute of Peace and for the Terrorist Propaganda Project.
Tara Bahrampour
Reporter with the Washington Post and author of “To See and See Again: A Life in Iran and America”
Tara Bahrampour has been a staff writer for the Washington Post since 2004. Based in Washington, she covers immigration and has also reported for the Post from North Africa, the Middle East, and the Republic of Georgia. She is the author of To See and See Again: A Life in Iran and America, a memoir about revolution and growing up between two cultures. She has written for the New Yorker, the New York Times and The American Scholar.
Carl Gershman
President of the National Endowment for Democracy
Carl Gershman is President of the National Endowment for Democracy, a private, congressionally supported grant-making institution with the mission to strengthen democratic institutions around the world through nongovernmental efforts. In addition to presiding over the Endowment’s grants program in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union and Latin America, he has overseen the creation of the quarterly Journal of Democracy, International Forum for Democratic Studies, and the Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellows Program. He also took the lead in launching in New Delhi in 1999 the World Movement for Democracy, which is a global network of democracy practitioners and scholars.
3:10 pm – How the Arab Spring Begat a Deadly Summer
Oula Abdulhamid Alrifai, Syrian Youth Activist
Ahmed Al Omran, Blogger, Saudijeans.org
Andrew J. Tabler, Next Generation Fellow, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
Katherine Zoepf, Moderator, Schwartz Fellow, New America Foundation, Contributor, New York Times
Katherine Zoepf, a Schwartz Fellow at New America and a New York Times contributor, moderated a discussion with Syrian youth activist Oula Alrifai, Saudi blogger Ahmed Al Omran and journalist Andrew Tabler. Al Omran explained how he got into online activism about Saudi Arabia, where political discussion is against the law. Last year was a year of opposition campaigns, he said, and the Internet became a forum for the opposition in a country where people are not allowed to protest. Alrifai discussed a conference she participated in this year in Antalya, Turkey, where Syrian activists gathered to support the growing revolution. Many had to sneak out of Syria to attend the conference, she said, and many even returned to Syria afterward to continue protests. Tabler, who has written a lot about older opposition forces in Syria, talked about the rise of a younger, more tech-savvy opposition that isn’t interested in compromising with the established regime. The people are now realizing there are no positive aspects to the regime remaining in power, fueling the opposition movement. The uprisings could continue for a long time, and could become much more violent, he said, but they will not be able to last without changing dramatically to meet new social conditions.
Oula Abdulhamid, a Syrian activist who helped organize a conference for members of the Syrian opposition in Turkey this week, said the protest videos posted Friday were mainly the work of activists who had crossed Syria’s borders.
“In some of the areas on the borders, they’re using Jordanian lines and Lebanese lines,” Ms. Abdulhamid said. “They’re crossing the borders and going to Internet cafes. They’re doing such hard work just to get a few videos out. They’re risking their lives.”
My very first interview on Alhurra TV right after Syrians took the streets demanding freedom and dignity. This episode is focused on the role of the Social Media used by Syrian youth in the Syrian Revolution. Assad troops were committing massacres in the province of Daraa, Al-Omari Mosque was under siege. Hundreds of civilians were killed when the Fourth Armored Division led by Maher al-Assad entered Daraa.
Oula Abdulhamid is featured with her parents Khawla Yusuf, Ammar Abdulhamid and her brother Mouhanad in The Dissident, Ammar Abdulhamid of Syria (page 285)
The Next Founders brings to light the stories of seven remarkable people, six Arabs and an Iranian. Five are men; two, women. Four are Sunnis, two are Shiites, and the seventh is mixed. Their lives revolve around a sense of mission, and while the angles from which they attack it are varied, this mission is the same for all seven–to make their countries more free and democratic.
Having fled Syria in 2005, Montgomery College alumna Oula Alrifai ’09 is thriving in her new life. A government and poli- tics major, 22-year-old Alrifai graduated from the College and received a Transfer Academic Excellence Scholarship, which will cover tuition for four full semesters at the University of Maryland (UM).
Raised in Damascus, Syria, Alrifai finds life in America refreshingly different. “… I really value and appreciate the freedom here,” says Alrifai. “I can choose what to study and what to wear. I can express my thoughts freely.”
The eldest child of pro-democracy activists, Alrifai was raised with certain western values, which set her apart from many of her peers.
In 2002, Alrifai’s parents founded the Tharwa Foundation, which promotes human rights and poli- tical change in Syria, the Middle East, and the North Africa region. Tharwa in Arabic literally means “wealth,” but Alrifai explains that it also embodies the larger idea of diversity and accepting differences as a form of wealth for society as a whole. They lead grassroots efforts to break the government’s “infor- mation blockade.”
As a result of those activities, Alrifai says, her family was forced into exile and emigrated to the United States. They are considered politi- cal refugees. “We cannot return, until a regime change, and our relatives are banned from traveling.”
During her first weeks at Montgomery College, Alrifai found the multicultural atmos- phere helpful for overcoming
her initial shyness to communi- cate in English. “I met students from all over the world,” she says. “We could correct each other. To be honest, everybody, including professors, were very supportive.”
“The most important thing is that I can dream, and work hard, and I can achieve my dreams. I have done so many things since 2005 that I could never have been able to achieve in my homeland.”
We broke the fear in Syria. 