PHOTOREPORTAGE: Solidarity Visit to Ukraine

In July 2023, I took part in solidarity visit to Ukraine organised by Ukrainian Leadership Academy. We spend one week visiting Kyiv, Lutsk, and Lviv, and exploring local humanitarian aid organizations.

One day I was a refugee with no country to return to, the next day I was a Syrian in France : AnnaTalks with OMAR

When the refugee crisis began in 2015, I was 14 years old. Back then, I wasn’t yet interested in politics – all my opinions in that regard were adopted from the “trusted adults” in my life (a.k.a. my parents and teachers). I vividly remember the moment when I was cooking in the kitchen, and listening to my dad’s warnings about those “dangerous migrants coming to Europe on boats”. Perhaps at the same moment, a few hundred kilometers away, Omar’s boat was approaching the Greek border… I met Omar in 2023, when we both worked at Radio WNE and when Syria was still under the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad. When he told me the story of his arrival in Europe, the story you’re about to read, I was shocked –  it sounded like an action movie. And yet it is the reality – and quite often the only way for tens of thousands of people to preserve their morals ​​and escape prison or even death. My dad’s words came to mind again: Would he change his opinion about refugees if he heard Omar’s story? Would others change theirs as well? The thing is that while alarmist stories about refugees frighten us on a daily basis, the testimonies from the actual refugees are not as common. This is often due to the language barrier – for example, Omar doesn’t speak English – but also to the fact that people simply tend to stay in their national communities – even though there are many foreigners in France, I know from my own experience that the French and the foreign communities rarely meet in real life… But that’s exactly why podcast AnnaTalks exists and why, in March 2025 I interviewed Omar for it. And because the interview is in French and I don’t want to deprive those of you who don’t understand it, you can find an English translation below. Enjoy reading! What happened in Syria? To begin, could you describe what it was like growing up in Syria for you ? I grew up like most Syrians who were born in Syria, I went to school there and stayed until 2013, when I was about 17 or 18 years old. I lived in a town called Douma, around 15 km from Damascus. We were ordinary people living in their city.  How would you describe Syrians as a nation? Is there some trait that all Syrians have in common? My view of Syria is that we actually didn’t know each other before the revolution. In Syria there are around 20 different ethnic and national groups, so there is not a single national identity shared by everyone. I think most Syrians feel like some second-class citizens because we don’t really have this concept of “citizenship” – you never hear it in Syria. But the one thing we did all share was the fear of the secret intelligence services and the feeling that this country does not belong to us. I think the dictatorship we lived under is the only thing that the 24 millions of Syrians share. Could you explain what happened in Syria? Give some context about Assad’s regime and about what happened in 2011? I’ll be very simple: In 1970, Hafez al-Assad, the former Syrian president and the father of Bashar al-Assad, took power through a coup and he ruled for 30 years. When he died in 2000, the Syrian parliament modified the constitution so his son Bashar could take over – just to keep power in the hands of the family. Bashar al-Assad promised us to make political and economic reforms. And he partially did – things got a bit better in the economy. But the political violence in Syria was the same as during his father’s time. In 2011, after the Arab Spring revolutions started first in Tunisia, then in Egypt, it arrived in Syria. In March 2011, a group of boys, between 13 and 15 years old, wrote on the walls of the city of Daraa in the south of Syria “It’s your turn now, Doctor”. “Doctor” referring to Bashar al-Assad, because he used to be an ophthalmologist. That’s when the revolution really started. At first, it was not a military revolution, just peaceful demonstrations, demands for political freedom, freedom of expression. City after city joined. Until we arrived at a moment when the whole of Syria was demonstrating. I was 15 at that time and I joined the demonstrations in my city Douma. And I saw the Syrian army shoot at peaceful people with my own eyes. We weren’t even calling for the fall of the regime at first, nor for the condemnation of Assad – we were too afraid to do that. But the regime escalated the violence. By the end of 2011, they were bombing entire cities. In 2013, they committed the first chemical attack. It was in my city. It was 21 August 2013. At that moment we understood that even if we did not participate in demonstrations or in military actions, we would be killed. Since, we had lost our house, and my parents had lost their jobs, we couldn’t leave so easily. We had to sell our car, and take a bus to the north of Syria, to the Turkish border. We spent 11 or 12 hours on the bus. On that journey, for the first time, I saw Daesh and all the armed groups active in Syria at the time. Can you explain what Daesh is for those who don’t know? Daesh is a jihadist military group that wants to apply Sharia to the entire world. For them, democracy, the concept of citizenship – it doesn’t exist, that’s for the West, for Christians, for people who don’t resemble them. They try to apply the Quran to the people no matter where they are. Daesh is an international group. They are not Syrians, they are not Iraqis, they are not Tunisians. Members of Daesh come from all over the world : France, Belgium, Europe…