He risked everything to stand up to Assad, but he did not see the regime fall
As It Happened7:34He risked everything to stand up to Assad, but he never saw the regime fall
Time and again, Mazen al-Hamada risked everything to help his fellow Syrians.
In the early days of the Arab Spring uprisings, he marched in the streets and called for the fall of the brutal regime of President Bashar al-Assad.
As a result, he was repeatedly arrested and tortured in the country's notorious prison system.
He fled to the Netherlands in 2013, spending the next seven years talking about the horrors he had with both. he testified and endured in prisonhoping to convince world leaders to bring Assad to justice.
Finally, in 2020, he returned home in desperation hoping that he could convince the Syrian authorities to release those still imprisoned, including his nephew.
But he was arrested as soon as he arrived at Damascus airport, and his loved ones never saw or heard from him again – until Tuesday, when his family identified his body in a hospital morgue.
On Thursday, hundreds of Syrians poured into the streets of Damascus, some for the first time in more than a decade, to attend Hamada's funeral.
“I felt sad watching the videos. It comforts me to see people honoring him like that,” said British film producer Sara Afshar, a friend of Hamada's. As It Happened hosted by Nil KÓ§ksal.
“They gave him a hero's funeral, which he is. He is a hero.”
Mourners were part of the funeral of Syrian activist Mazen al-Hamada in Damascus on Thursday. Hamada, whose body was found by his family in a military hospital this week, was a well-known activist during the Syrian conflict who was repeatedly arrested and tortured. He had fled to Europe but returned to Syria in 2020 and was arrested again upon arrival.
Afshar first met Hamada in the Netherlands in 2016 while researching his documentary about the crackdown, Syria Disappeared: The Case Against Assad.
There were no cameras at that first meeting, he said. They just talk. But he knew right away that he wanted him to be the master of his film.
“He was incredibly open – more than anyone else I've talked to,” she said.
“He was determined to put himself in danger, at a great cost to himself. But the reason he wanted to do that is because he wanted the whole country, the whole country, his case, let's hear about what happened in these prisons, because he wanted the world to do it.”
But the world, he said, let him down.
Three years after the film's release in 2017, Hamada traveled the world with Afshar, meeting with policy makers and pressing for justice for Assad's victims.
But what they found, he says, were governments willing to look the other way and form a normal relationship with the government.
“That makes me very angry, and it made Mazen very angry,” he said. “He was telling people how horrible the situation was in these prisons, and the world was doing nothing about it.”
Why did he go back
In 2020, Hamada returned to Syria, against the wishes of his loved ones.
He has been given assurances from the Syrian government that he will be safe, reports the Washington Post. But, instead, he was immediately arrested when he arrived at Damascus airport.
“We can sit here and think, why would he do such a dangerous thing?” Afshar said. “But, the thing is, he felt like he had done everything he could do in the West.”
After Hamada's arrest, it is unclear what happened to him, which is unusual in Syria. The United Nations estimates that 100,000 people went missing during the 14-year war, many of them arbitrarily arrested or forcibly disappeared.
As rebels ousted Assad this week and began opening prisons in the country, Hamada's loved ones hoped they might meet him.
Instead, they found him dead in a military hospital, his body in a condition that suggested he had been killed only a week ago.
Singing in the streets
On Thursday, Syrians carried his coffin, decorated with the Syrian flag, through the streets of Damascus.
“We will not forget your blood, Mazen,” the marchers, most of them young, chanted outside the mosque as family and friends held funeral prayers inside.
Others were chanting: “We will take revenge, Bashar. We will bring you before the law.”
Some of the marchers knew Hamada, while others did not. Many held up black and white photos and shouted the names of their lost loved ones.
Hamada's brother, Saed, told Reuters that when Assad's government fell, he wished Hamada could get out of prison to see what was happening in Syria.
But, now, he says, his brother is a martyr.
“After he was killed, we feel happy because we paid for this freedom with blood,” he said.
For others, Thursday's rally and funeral was a sign of hope for a war-torn country whose future remains uncertain.
Many of the participants said they last protested in Damascus about 13 years ago, before Assad attacked the protesters and turned the conflict into an all-out war.
“I didn't think I would go out and meet in any way, shape or form in Damascus,” said Mohammad Kulthum, 32, as he marched with his mother.
Afshar says it would mean that the whole world in Hamada could once again see the spirit of change alive in the streets of Syria.
“I wish and hope that when he rests in peace, he will see how they respect him, and what he meant to them in fighting the campaign against the disappeared, and what is to come – the campaign to fight for human rights. justice.”
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