22 September 2020
When a new “Progressive International” invited Syria’s Yassin al-Haj Saleh to join, he was happy to accept. When he then submitted this letter for their publication, they ceased contacting him without explanation.
solidarity
Syrian writer and former prisoner of conscience Yassin al-Haj Saleh speaks to Belarusian activist Marina Naprushkina about the global rise of authoritarians, the “plague” of Putinism, and why the time is ripe for new political movements.
As Trump threatens to turn the army on peaceful demonstrators, Syrian activist and author Leila Al-Shami writes what Americans might learn from Syria’s nine-plus years of revolutionary struggle.
Too rarely does it occur to Westerners, worried about the erosion of their democracies, that refugees from Syria and elsewhere have valuable experience striving for civic values against authoritarian forces.
A quick English summary of our Arabic news coverage this week.
In his thirteenth letter to his missing wife Samira al-Khalil, abducted in Douma in 2013, Yassin al-Haj Saleh pays tribute to those who have given time and energy to promoting her cause.
The problems of solidarity recently outlined by Yassin al-Haj Saleh are indeed part of a wider, historic breakdown in the values and impact of the Western left, writes Jules Etjim, who offers a “sketch” of one possible way forward.
While generally well-intentioned, the concept of solidarity involves an unequal power relationship between those offering and receiving it. A preferable state of affairs would be partnership, placing Western activists and their counterparts elsewhere on equal footing.
Syrian democrats are natural allies of the demonstrators currently being gunned down across Iran. May this mark a new chapter in regionwide, cross-sectarian solidarity, says Robin Yassin-Kassab.