World Courant
Bashar al-Assad is gone and Syria is lastly free. Nevertheless, I can not absolutely rejoice within the long-awaited fall of his regime and the liberation of my nation. It’s because, like so many Syrians, I’ve a gaping wound: somebody I really like remains to be misplaced in Al-Assad’s prisons.
My youthful brother Youssef, my soulmate, disappeared in 2018 and I’ve been searching for him ever since.
Youssef was as soon as vigorous. His smile lit up each room he entered. He cherished music and dancing the Dabkeh. He bred pigeons with dedication and care.
All the pieces modified in August 2018. The regime accused him of taking part in opposition actions in opposition to the regime, they usually held his spouse captive to strain him to show himself in.
Afraid that they’d hurt his spouse, he left the Rukban refugee camp, the place he lived, south in the direction of Sweida. Someplace alongside the way in which he disappeared. And I attempted daily to search out him.
All these years I pushed myself not to surrender and to not lose hope. However I had so little to carry on to. With every passing day, the spark of hope I had left pale.
Then, final month, after the collapse of the regime, a brief video from the not too long ago liberated Sweida jail reignited the hearth in my coronary heart. The photographs confirmed a person. His face, his posture and his fleeting smile seemed precisely like Youssef’s.
I performed the clip over and over. I despatched it to my sisters. I despatched it to Youssef’s spouse – to anybody who knew him, who may affirm that it was certainly him.
Everybody who watched the clip mentioned the identical factor: “It is him. It should be him.”
I actually wish to imagine it is him. That he’s alive. That we’ll embrace him once more quickly. I’m filled with hope once more. However I am additionally scared. What if we’re improper? What if this fragile hope destroys us once more?
We now have lived in uncertainty for therefore lengthy. Years of sleepless nights observing images, years of empty chairs at our dinner tables, years of unanswered prayers. Not figuring out for years whether or not he’s alive or lifeless.
For therefore lengthy it felt like solutions to our questions had been not possible to search out. Al-Assad’s prisons had been impenetrable, the reality was locked behind concrete partitions and barbed wire. Investigators could not get shut, households of inmates like mine did not get solutions, and the world went on as if our ache did not exist and the destiny of our family members did not matter. However with al-Assad gone and the jail doorways large open, we have now an opportunity to get to the reality – if we act shortly.
Because the doorways of prisons and detention facilities unlock throughout the nation, we search frantically amid the chaos – digging by way of scraps of knowledge, following rumors and looking for names scrawled on torn paperwork.
We won’t let this second slip by way of our fingers.
Up to now the search has been too gradual, too disorganized and too insufficient. Worldwide organizations such because the Worldwide Committee of the Pink Cross, that are presupposed to safeguard proof, present humanitarian support to prisoners of conscience and join them to their households, have didn’t take motion. They’re absent in our hour of want.
Each doc, each path of proof that emerges from al-Assad’s dungeons is a chunk of a life, and an opportunity for closure for somebody who has suffered too lengthy: a father’s final phrases, a son’s final abode , the destiny of a mom. We should maintain on to every of those traces, these impressions of life, as a result of shedding them could be like shedding our family members once more.
What we’d like in the present day are specialists who get to work accumulating, investigating and preserving proof. This work should be achieved urgently and rigorously in order that we will discover solutions now and finally obtain justice within the months and years to come back.
We, the family of the disappeared, can not search alone. The trauma of not figuring out the place your beloved is, whether or not alive or lifeless, consumes you. Limits your skill to proceed the battle. And uncovering the reality about our lacking family members is not our solely job both. As we seek for our brothers, fathers, husbands, moms and sisters, we additionally attempt to discover methods to rebuild, to look after the youngsters who’ve misplaced mother and father, and to make sure that this ache doesn’t lengthen to the subsequent technology digests.
Justice is just not a luxurious; it’s the solely means we will start to heal. With out solutions and with out accountability for many who orchestrated and carried out this nightmare, there might be no peace.
I needed to go away Syria after my brother disappeared. For years I could not return to search for him, however now I can lastly accomplish that. The video of Youssef – or a person who appears to be like quite a bit like him – has given me hope and a purpose to take motion. I am going again to Syria now to observe all of the clues, to ask the questions I have not been capable of ask for years, and to stroll into the locations that had been as soon as closed off. This can be my solely likelihood to search out out if he is nonetheless alive, or if there is a grave the place I can lastly say goodbye.
However we, the households of the disappeared, can not and shouldn’t do that work alone. We want assist, we’d like assist. And we’d like specialists and specialists to take the lead.
The worldwide group and the leaders of this fragile transition should not neglect the prisoners and their households as they chart a brand new path for our nation. We now have lived in silence for too lengthy. Now we demand what’s rightfully ours: solutions, justice and dignity.
The views expressed on this article are these of the writer and don’t essentially mirror the editorial place of Al Jazeera.
Searching for hope in Syria | Bashar al-Assad
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