Yaman Marwah hasn’t been home in over a decade.
The second-year Carleton law student, 18, says he was about six or seven years old in 2000 when he and his immediate family had to leave his home country of Syria because of their political affiliations. As a child, he didn’t understand why he could no longer stay at his home in Qatana, about 27 kilometres southwest of Damascus, the country’s capital city.
“I just understood later from my dad what was going on,” Marwah says. “That’s when we decided to rise against this regime. And now the revolution’s started, [so] we have to be politically active.”
While the Syrian government and opposition groups have spent nearly a year clashing, often violently, over the future of the country, Marwah says he has attempted to do his part to support the revolution in his homeland, spending most of his time doing activism work from Canada.
“We’re trying to do our best from here, through connections in Syria, trying to raise awareness for what’s happening,” he says.
Marwah’s memories of his childhood are happy, he says, but children growing up in Syria today are experiencing a very different reality.
“We used to see kids drawing and having fun and stuff, now all we see is kids holding posters and banners asking the regime to go down. The whole thing has changed,” he says.
“I used to play in the neighbourhood, I used to do a lot of stuff. And now, what they are going through is just protesting and they’re still just like five, six years old.”
Most of Marwah’s family still lives in Syria.
“When I talk to them over the phone, they say nothing is happening. That’s how scared they are. When you talk to them over Skype, or even Twitter, you hear a lot of different issues. You hear the real story of what’s happening. They just put the laptop [to] the windows so you can see what’s happening in the streets, what’s really happening in the city,” he says.
Two of Marwah’s cousins were taken into custody, he says.
One cousin, a 16-year-old, is out because his family paid for his release, while the other is still in custody, he says.
The younger generation isn’t the only group of activists in Marwah’s family.
His grandfather was killed in Syria’s Hama massacre in February 1982, Marwah says.
His father and mother are all supporting the revolution and working against the Syrian government from their new home in Canada, he says, where the family has resided for three years after living in the United Arab Emirates in the years following their departure from Syria.
Both of his parents have a background in law, with his father holding a PhD in the subject and his mother holding a master’s degree, he says.
His father has been working with the legal office of the Syrian National Council, an opposition group, to prepare new laws, while his mother works to raise awareness and is an administrator for a few revolution websites, Marwah says.
“The whole family is working full-time right now [on the] revolution,” he says.
Marwah has been working with a non-profit group called the Syrian Canadian Council to bring attention to the revolution and the violence in Syria. The group has three immediate goals, he says.
First, they want Canada to expel the ambassador from Syria, he says.
Second, they want the Syrian National Council to be recognized as the country’s official temporary government.
Third, they want the international community to protect Syrian civilians.
“When I say international protection, I don’t mean any military [attacks] on the grounds of Syria. We’re demanding saving civilians’ lives by making safe havens, a buffer zone, a no-fly zone maybe as well,” he says.
But Syrians supporting the opposition can’t rely on the international community to fight their battles for them, Marwah says.
“We don’t have hope in the international community any more,” he says. “We think that our main issue right now is the Free Syrian Army and the people protesting each and every single day.”
Marwah’s involvement in the revolution includes working with the Syrian Canadian Council and protesting, sometimes in Toronto and Montreal, in an effort to raise awareness and show solidarity with those living through the violence, he says.
Protesting helps release his anger over the violence, he says.
Marwah points to the Feb. 3 rally at the Syrian embassy in Ottawa as one that stands out in his mind.
“We were just screaming the whole night, for four or five continuous hours,” he says. “This kind of made us feel a little bit better.”
The hours he puts into activism have affected other aspects of his life, including his schoolwork.
“I used to be an A-student at Carleton,” he says. “Not anymore, after the revolution started. It’s just taking a lot of time from everyone.”
Professors have been understanding of his situation, he says, sometimes even giving him extensions on assignments if he’s busy with meetings or protests.
Despite the effect on his academics, Marwah says he doesn’t regret his remote involvement in the revolution.
“You can’t put the Syrian regime down from here in Canada. All we can do is motivate the people over there,” he says. “I guess what I’m doing is what a lot of other people are doing as well, which is trying to let the anger out, just get the feeling that OK, I’m doing something for my country. I’m not just watching my people die.”
While Marwah currently lives far away from the conflict, he says the cause is still close to his heart and should be important to other Canadians, including Carleton students, who Marwah says have been very supportive of the revolution.
“It’s not about being Syrian, it’s not about being Muslim, it’s not about being Christian,” he says.
“It’s just about human rights and the rule of law. It’s about people and having your human rights. Everyone should stand against a brutal regime [that’s] just killing the people.”
He and other expats are fighting against the Syrian government from abroad so they can go home to Syria and rejoin their families and friends, he says.
When he thinks of his future, Marwah says he just hopes he can someday return to his birthplace.
“I can’t wait to write a Facebook status saying I’m going there,” he says. “That’s how bad it is.”
