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Handout / Reuters
Demonstrators protesting against Syria's President Bashar al-Assad gather during a march through the streets after Friday prayers in Adlb on Dec. 2, 2011. This image has been supplied by a third party. It is distributed, exactly as received by Reuters, as a service to clients
Activists inside Syria are being forced to leave the country as violence intensifies in the ninth month of anti-government protests.
Rima Flihan is an activist who left behind two children and her career after she received death threats following her release from a Syrian police station.
Flihan said she was near al-Hassan mosque in the al-Midan neighborhood of Damascus when she and nine other young female activists were detained in mid-July for protesting without permits.
“We laughed, we cried, and shared our fears and hopes together,” Flihan told NBC News in an email about her time in detention.
She said she remembered meeting one of the other detained women months earlier at a demonstration on Syria’s Independence Day, April 17. They were reunited when they were arrested and detained for four days in July.
Flihan said she met up with other activists on the day of her release and encouraged them to continue the fight. Part of her talk was recorded on this YouTube clip she shared with NBC News. She is the woman speaking with the white shirt and microphone.
The U.N.’s top human rights official said last week that her office estimates that more than 4,000 people have been killed since the uprising began in March.
Flihan fled the country in September for Jordan after she said she was threatened by government security forces and left her children in the care of her family still there.
Even though Flihan is no longer in the country, she said she remains in touch with many of the activists she demonstrated with through social media daily, and encourages her friends she met at demonstrations inside the country to continue protesting.
Flihan said she hopes to return when she feels her life is no longer under threat.
“I dream to go on a trip with my activist friends to all of the troubled spots in Syria and light a candle and celebrate freedom, and build our country in a different way,” Flihan said in an email.
A familiar name to the theater community in Damascus, Flihan worked as a theater writer and wrote two Syrian dramas.
Two years ago, she created a popular Syrian television drama called “Qoloob Saghirah” or “Small Hearts” that uncovered what she called were injustices in the region to spark discussions and debate surrounding issues of organ trafficking, homelessness, and women’s rights.
It’s rare that we hear of the stories of Syrian female activists. Flihan, whose father was an army officer who was imprisoned for his political views against the civilian killings in the Syrian town of Hama in 1982, said she wanted to share her story with NBC News to highlight the women of the revolution.
You can follow Rima Abdelkader on Twitter at: twitter.com/rimakader
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The Baathist regime will fall, Assad will go into exile in Iran. The Sunni majority will probably take the same path as Tunisia, Gaza and Egypt. They will hold open elections and the Islamists will win. Once this occurs, a Taliban like government curtailing the rights of women and minorities will create another swamp for terrorists to flourish. It is a broken record. While I have been a supporter of US proactive policy in the Middle East, I am close to the end of this. We only have one true ally in Israel. If it wasn't for the oil, I would say get out, but that damn oil. Even though most of our imports are from Canada and Mexico, we need oil to flow freely in the Middle East. These Islamists don't know how to manage oil.
Sunni rulers of Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE and some more nations are worse than the Syria's Assad.
Saudi Arabia's Sunni rulers and their other gang members have oil, oil companies and lobbyists on their side.
So all including UN make mountains and sometimes of nothing of whatever Saudi's want.
This happened in Iraq. Where was WMD? Where was the need to station the US troops to gaurd the Saudi Sunni barbaric rulers without Bibles?
Kuwaiti ruler with 65 wives was saved by the US troops. Still, the same Sunni barbaric ruler did not yield to the small US and allies requests later!
While making themselves richer due to Iraqi 1991 and 2003 wars, these Sunni rulers contributed to the spread all over the world of the Sunni Islamic extremist versions of Salaffi and Wahhabi sects by funding their mosques liberally.
They dictate, blackmail and backstab conveniently forgetting the helps given.
In the name of oil, these bigoted, highly corrupt and seventh century mindset barbaric Sunni rulers have gotten away with murders!
Saddam's Iraq, Syria and other Sunni ruled nations are certainly more tolerant towards like Christians and other minorities than the beastly Sunni rulers.
It is not our business to determine the winners. Let the Shiites and Sunnis fight among themselves and decide the winners.
We go over there and support this mess hoping to slap a little Democracy on them whan in fact Democracy is not even working here. Never mind, it is simply not worth wasting my time on. Stop aiding these people period. Let them destroy themselves if that is what they want it is their right. If they are meant to be free they will be but so far the tide is not going the way the west wanted it that is for sure.
If and when the present autocratic dictatorship in Syria is overthrown, freedom and democracy will not flourish. After Assad is gone a radical Arab/ Moslem dictatorship will be imposed on the Syrian people. The fate of the people will go from bad to worse. The people in this article will be lucky to be found floating in the Mediterranean.