Syrian uprising

Hello and thank you for downloading Witness from the BBC World Service. Two years ago, the uprising in Syria began. Luis Hidalgo has been talking to one young Syrian about the first anti-government demonstrations in the country. It's the 15th of March, 2011, and change has been sweeping the Arab world. Tunisia's president has gone so has Hosni Mubarak of Egypt. In Libya, Colonel Gaddafi is battling the rebels who will eventually topple him. And now in Syria, there are the first stirrings of protest. Reports from Syria say hundreds of protesters have taken to the streets in the capital Damascus and in Aleppo, the country's second largest city. The protesters say they want democratic reforms and the release of all political prisoners. It wasn't the first time that people in Syria had tried to go out onto the streets. Massin Al-Balki was one of a group of young Syrians who tried to organize a demonstration in Damascus a few weeks earlier. It was a Friday and it was raining too much and the policies were standing in the start of every street in Damascus. So if they saw two guys who are standing with each other, they will arrest them and they will investigate with them. Who are you and give me your identity card, something like that. The plan had been to go to Damascus University and write, "We want freedom on the walls." But the culture of fear ran deep in Syria. I was enough brave to go but not to write on the walls of Damascus University but I wrote on the WC walls. On the toilet walls? Yeah, on the toilet walls. I want to break the fear inside my heart, you know. So I go to the toilets and write, "People want freedom and Bashar, you have to go out." But the seeds of revolution had already been sown in Syria that spring of 2011. Unknown to Massin and other Syrians, 90 kilometres south of Damascus, in the town of Dara, close to the Jordanian border, some children had done what the adults didn't dare. They had spray-painted graffiti about Assad on a wall. The children came from one of Dara's biggest families, the Al Abazid family, who Massin was related to by marriage. Fifteen children were arrested, some of them tortured. Massin only heard about it when he travelled south that much to his father's village, which was just outside Dara. My brother has a wife from Al Abazid family and she called her family in Dara Alban. They told her that there are 15 children who were arrested and their families went to the Office of Art of Najib. He was the head of the military intelligence, the cousin of Bashar Assad and they asked him to release the children and then he said to them, "Forget about that and if you want a new children, bring your wives and they rape them and they will have the children for you." As well as the children, one of the city's best known doctors, the woman Aisha Masalma, had also been detained. They arrest her because she was talking with her friend in Egypt and she said to her Egyptian friends, "Congratulations for your freedom and congratulations because you have no more Bahaslim Barak at your country." Then this talking was monitored by the Syrian intelligence forces and they came to her house and arrested her. Then their family came to the Art of Najib also. They asked to release her. Then he said to them, "He shaved her hair and he was using the lighter to burn the remnants of her hair." Or in front of her family? As I said, the cousin of the president Bashar Assad, said that to the family of Aisha Masalma and to the families of the children that you will not have your children and this woman again. So these families gathered with each other in front of this building asking the freedom of their children and this woman. Then Art of Najib said, "You have about one hour, if you didn't go home, I will open fire against you." Then they said, "We will not go until we have our children and this woman." Then they opened the fire. It was in the 18th of March. These were the opening shots of Syria's revolution. Two men died that day. Mahmoud Jawabra and Hussam Agash, the first two martyrs in this revolution, their blood dropped in this day, 18th of March. Then all the families of the people, all of them, came to attend the funerial day. The funeral, in accordance with Muslim tradition, was the next day, the 19th of March. I have a recording, a proof that there are about 600 of thousands who shared in this funerial day. The recording was made by someone else. Maazin couldn't get into Dara from his father's village because the army had set up checkpoints into the city. His cousin rang to tell him the news. Maazin's job was to send it to the outside world, to tell them what was happening in Dara using the internet. I have a program on Facebook. It doesn't allow for the intelligence to know where you are using the laptop from. So they will not say that I'm from Dara. I was using internet like 19 hours daily. I took this in use and I sent them to BBC El Jazeera Al-Arabia, CNN, France, Vancouver, and too many channels and ministries of foreign affairs in Europe and the United Nations and I sent them hundreds of emails saying that we have a revolution in Dara and security forces are shooting the people here. Maazin was doing this in a village where there was only intermittent electricity and the most basic internet connection. I was waiting. I'm not kidding. I was waiting about 20 hours to upload a video with 30 seconds. And how did you keep your laptop operating? You had a battery. Do you have a generator? One of my cousins, he's an engineer and he said to me that I can recharge my laptop by using the battery of his car. He did something with the cables and he could recharge our mobiles and charge our laptops at that time. Everybody must have known what you were doing. Did they help you? Did some of them come to you and say, "Look, he must stop this. This is dangerous." Yeah, I want to be honest with you. One day, I heard my father say to my mother, if the Syrian intelligence forces came to my home at Al-Arabia, so what we should do? When my mother said to him, "I think we have to hide him." Then she said to him, "I think we have to put him in the fridge and we will throw the key of the fridge and we will tell the police that we lost the key. This is one of the things that I was suffering." Because the old men and the old women in Syria suffered a lot from Hamas, masqueras, and the 80s of the last century. When half of the lesson, the ex-president and the father of masqueras said, "He murdered thousands of people." So they suffered a lot and they sewed by their eyes the civilians who were tortured, so they don't want to live it again. Even two years on, masin still finds it hard to talk about that time. Meanwhile, the protests in Dara continued. The bath party had quarters, and a local politicians' house were burnt down by protesters, and security forces opened a fire, as thousands continued to pour into the central square, demanding an end to emergency laws and carrying olive branches. We used to shout, "Beast, beast, Syria, want to freedom, beast, beast." And we used to say, like a verse in the Holy Quran, "If you raise your hand to kill me, I will not raise my hand to kill you. We used to say that to the police officer." I was full of happiness, you know. It was my first time to express myself in the streets. It was my first time to call Bashar as it without the title of Mr. President, you know. It was my first time to say, "I want my freedom. I want to express myself. I want to say what I want." A month after the uprising began, masin was warned that the security services were on to him, helped by his brother that same day, masin left Syria, for Dubai. A week later, tanks entered Dara to crush the protests, hundreds were killed. Two years on, Syria is still being torn apart by fighting. Like hundreds of thousands of other Syrians, masin is waiting to return home. A week before he gave this interview, his parents managed to join him in Cairo. It was the first time he'd seen them in two years. Luis Hidalga, for details of our complete range of downloads and our terms of use, go to BBCWorldService.com/podcasts.