The Citizen Journalists Taking on ISIS in Syria

Estefanía Campos  | 06 de octubre de 2017  | Vistas: 89

Abdalaziz Alhamza talks in the College Freedom Forum 2017 about he went from having no political interest to becoming a city journalist that informed the world about the injustices in Syria to change his reality.

In March 2011, the Syrian revolution started and Abdalaziz decided to join the demonstrations in the streets; he was arrested and tortured three times. On his second time on the streets, he decided to film what was happening, upload them to the the internet and this made him realize how citizen journalism could make a difference.

The Syrian regime prevented most of the media organizations to enter city and cover what was going on. So it was our mission as a youth to film and report to tell the world what was going on.”

He made a lot of efforts to restore normality in Raqqa, like cleaning the streets and opening schools so education could be given, but in 2013 ISIS started to take control of Raqqa and the streets became violent again; public executions started to happen, there were confrontations between ISIS and the Free Syrian Army and Raqqa people’s human rights were being violated.

We decided not to be silent. We were forced to act. We founded Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently (RBSS).”

Abdalaziz shares details about how this organization works and the team. He says their mission is to show the reality of life under ISIS, but also covering all forces that were committing human rights violation against civilians. Their work reached international attention all over the world, which provoked the execution of members of RBSS. This only motivated Alhamza to continue fighting for them.

Don’t miss Abdalaziz final words, in which he tells people not to say they can’t make a difference because of their age, because he could accomplish it since he was 20 years old.