We will bring back luster to the city of Raqqa

Speech of Abu Mohammed, One of the founders of Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, for the Parliament of the Netherlands – 4 November 2015

Ibrahim Abdel Kader was born in the city of Raqqa in 1995. He began his revolutionary activities in participating in peaceful demonstrations against the Asad regime, and no sooner was the city of Raqqa liberated or he moved to work in the media as a reporter. Ibrahim started working with the website “Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently” (RBSS) since its launch to expose the Daesh practices in the city, and Ibrahim was one of the spokesmen of the team of journalists. He eventually left the city of Raqqa for the Turkish city of Urfa city until he was assassinated there a few days ago. Al Daesh cut off his head in his home in the city of Urfa which began to actually carry out its threats and which have not stopped since a year from now. This is part of the price we have to pay every day in our search for freedom.

Please, do let me introduce myself, for that is the only link, which still ties me to my country. I do not want to use an alias, because that is what members of ISIS do, but neither do I want to employ my full name because that is what I was forced to repeat letter by letter in the prisons of the regime. I am a young Syrian graduated in Law, exiled from his country, forced to leave it for a very simple reason that you may consider a very basic right. My fault, the reason that compelled me to abandon my country was my love for it and my desire to see it free and generous and not under the control of the forces of tyranny and oppression which represent Al-Asad neither under the boot of the forces of darkness and subjugation, that deprives us from our liberty and free-will. I am thankful for your having invited me to be present here, and for the time you have given me so that I can talk to you. I will not dwell on and take a lot of your time. I created, with a group of friends, a group called “Al-Raqqa is being Slaughtered in Silence” which was a continuation of our previous work on exposing the number one terrorist, namely, Bachar Al-Asad, who was one of the main reasons of the emergence of terrorist groups in Syria, and the outrageous role his regime played in facilitating their entry in the country after they carried out acts of terror in Iraq. This time, Al-Asad turned a blind eye and let them into the country and helped them spread and extend their influence in order to promote the version of the conflict that his media was trying to sell to the West, that is: he was fighting terrorism. However, the simple cameras of the mobile phones the Syrian people carried exposed the brutality of the regime in the repression of the peaceful demonstrations that arose in 2011.

The campaign was established in April 2014 after the ISIS organization took over and occupied the city of Raqqa. The primary purpose of this campaign is to raise the voice of our oppressed people who are languishing under the control of this criminal organization, and to present a picture of what is going on in this city as well as to let their voice be heard all over the world. Unfortunately, one of our comrades and activist in our group, Al-Moutaz Billah Ibrahim was executed by ISIS as punishment for exposing the crimes of the organization, I mentioned this above. It was a message for us to fear them and to halt our work, but we continued our work despite the enormous sacrifices we endured and losses we suffered since the day one of our colleagues was found beheaded in his home in the Turkish city of Urfa. The campaign is aimed at several areas, the most important of them is to build civil society and to do media work. We are not professional politicians neither do we carry arms, we chose peaceful resistance as a weapon because we believe in its strength and capability to fight the evil forces of darkness which prevail in Syria.

The media team kept working to show the real situation in the town of Raqqa, where we are the exclusive source of accurate information from inside the city and uncovered lots of events and information concerning ISIS that stunned the world. That information was difficult to obtain had it not been for our network of activists in the field who investigated the facts and sought the correct information to be transmitted to the whole world. Our team inside the city made an effort to fight the extremist ideas by rising awareness among the people in several ways: mainly through paper publications and graffiti on the walls written in the style we used to adopt to confront the Al-Asad regime, and which we adapted to conform with the type of crime carried out by ISIS. Our war is much more challenging than the wars waged by armies against Al-Qaida and ISIS, because these wars end as soon as the terrorists are killed, but our war is the most important: to put an end to that extremist ideology and delete it from the people’s minds. It is a war against ideas not against people, for the terrorists move from country to country, leaving behind their radical thoughts, which inherit the younger generations, who, in their turn try to follow their extremists’ footsteps walking the paths of darkness.

The reality today drives many people to despair, but the experiences we went through made us stronger than we are, made us aware of the meaning of humanity and his strength. We do not believe in something called “The dream of the future Syria.” For us this is not just a dream that may not come true, but also an ineluctable fact that will come someday. Calm comes after the storm, and then we can mend our house garden again. So we will bring back the luster to our city and every wife and husband will be able to sit next to one another by the river without feeling intimidated by the random patrols of the ISIS police. Our children shall go to school to learn mathematics and literature, and not martial arts and they will not hear the roar of aircraft of the Al-Asad’s regime, nor his hateful explosive barrels, but the sound of music. My city shall not be ruled by the law of the jungle, by people pretending to serve the Lord and govern in his name, but we shall be at each other’s service. I shall help my Christian friend to lift the cross shattered by ISIS, and he shall help me restore the mosque torn down by Al-Asad’s aircraft and missiles.

The city of Al-Raqqa is, day and night, under the control of the ISIS organization and lives in the most difficult conditions and under the shadow of reactionary laws unfairly imposed by the extremists’ wishes and desires. Those are conditions humans cannot tolerate: all basic services are disrupted (health, education and other public services), people experience extreme poverty, and no individual has the right to live in dignity and to enjoy the most basic civil liberties. Nobody can work in anything without the approval of ISIS. One may be arrested at any moment and be killed in the most unpredictable way. This organization holds evil ideas and innovates new forms of executing people: burned to death, exploded or run over a tank, and so on. These brutal practices show no respect to human dignity even in the moment of his death. In short, one lives in a city where almost everything is forbidden and subjected to supervision and control to a point that if they were able to, they would impose on people rationing of the oxygen atoms we breath in.

We all know that once the forces of evil are released, it is hard to control them. ISIS has extended throughout the Middle East (Syrian and Iraq), but this does not mean that the danger will remain confined to that area. If it is left alone, it will harm and endanger the whole world, as we have seen in Libya and in the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt. Europe is not immune from this great danger. To turn a blind eye from the flow of ‘mujahedeen’ to the Syrian carnage is not a solution for the world, nor for their countries, which send them away in order to get rid of them and prevent being harmed by them. This tolerance will cause a lot of problems for the countries the mujahedeen originate from. How can we explain the arrival to Al-Raqqa of an Australian mujahed who came from the other side of the world and crossed many airports in order to fight? Therefore, the flow of extremist Mujahedeen to ISIS controlled areas should be interrupted, for they will return one day to their country loaded with the fanatic ideology of ISIS. This is not a matter that concerns only governments, but also normal people. The tightening of the link between the Syrian refugees in European countries and the indigenous citizens may perhaps help improve the situation by telling their stories of suffering and the tragedies that they have lived under the rule of that criminal organization. This may make those wishing to join ISIS give it a second thought and discover the manipulation of the propaganda used by the organization to promote its ideas and recruit new elements, especially in the social networking media.

On the other hand, the wrong approaches in dealing with Muslims and Arabs living in Europe strengthen the possibility of attracting new elements to ISIS as a result of the hostile positions in regard to them in their countries, and hence the presence of a good number of Dutch citizens fighting in the lines of ISIS. An example of that approach is the statements issued by the mayor of Rotterdam, Ahmed Abatable when he asked Dutch Muslims who do not respect the values of freedom to leave the country.

Similarly, the comments issued by the Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutted on the sixth of last February, when he said: ‘It would be better if the Dutch jihadists who went to fight in Syria died rather than to return to the Netherlands’, reflect a poor understanding of the nature of this problem, for Syria is not a garbage dump for other countries. Moreover, not all the jihadists who are fighting in Syria will die, as Mr. Prime Minister wished them to, but some of them will return to the country and pose a threat like ticking- time bombs, which may detonate any minute.

On the other hand, the wrong approaches in dealing with Muslims and Arabs living in Europe strengthen the possibility of attracting new elements to ISIS as a result of the hostile positions in regard to them in their countries, and hence the presence of a good number of Dutch citizens fighting in the lines of ISIS. An example of that approach is the statements issued by the mayor of Rotterdam, Ahmed Abatable when he asked Dutch Muslims who do not respect the values of freedom to leave the country.

Similarly, the comments issued by the Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutted on the sixth of last February, when he said: ‘It would be better if the Dutch jihadists who went to fight in Syria died rather than to return to the Netherlands’, reflect a poor understanding of the nature of this problem, for Syria is not a garbage dump for other countries. Moreover, not all the jihadists who are fighting in Syria will die, as Mr. Prime Minister wished them to, but some of them will return to the country and pose a threat like ticking- time bombs, which may detonate any minute.

To return to the issue of Syrian refugees and the problem faced by European countries these last days. Recently big efforts have been undertaken to develop solutions to curb the problem of fighting smugglers and building walls in countries that refugees have to cross. All of these solutions are solutions that are not radical, the problems will be repeated and there will be other tragedies. The one and only solution is to look at the reason for the flight of these people and to address the basic problem, namely the presence of Bashar al-Asad’s regime and terrorists together. Everyone should know that most of the leaders of extremist groups have been released in 2011 from the notorious Sednaya prison in Syria. Shall we ask ourselves someday why these people were released and why they are now leading the terrorist groups, for example, “Abu Luqman”, now leader of the city of Raqqa, one of the main men of Daesh in Syria? All problems can be summarized into one solution, which is the elimination of Bashar Asad’s regime and terrorism. Fear of terrorism here cannot be overdone and will not end without a solution to the problem in Syria. There will be dozens and even hundreds of fighters going there and coming back here. As civil organization we call this Parliament up to consider the Syrian society as an equal society and not to differentiate between its components. We also demand that civil society organizations are supported to solve the problem of carrying arms because they are the best placed to find solutions to the highly complicated problems. I emphasize that organizations should be supported that operate within the Syrian homeland and not working outside it. We call upon your parliament to put pressure on the Western alliance, which is supporting the Kurdish forces, which violate the rights of Arabs, Turks, and Syrian Christians in the countryside of Raqqa.

As Syrian youth believing in salvation and change and who long for a freedom in the quest of which many Syrians have lost their lives, we want to live in a democratic and pluralistic country, which is free and independent, where the rule of the law governs as it does in your country, a country which respects its citizens regardless of their race, color, religion, ethnicity or religious doctrine, a country where the only difference between citizens results from their carrying out their duties and demanding their rights, a country where Al-Asad and his dictatorial regime will be water under the bridge and ISIS a painful memory its sons lived through.

Finally, I thank you again. I am convinced that I am appealing to you on behalf of millions of Syrians. Do not let the terrorism of ISIS mislead you about the systematic terrorism that represents the regime of Al-Asad and his criminal gang. Both are accomplices in their crimes against the Syrian people. Let’s remember how the official mufti of the Al-Asad regime, Ahmad Hasoun threatened Europe with suicide attacks and sleeper cells hitting it, and how its fool foreign minister dismissed Europe because the old continent boycotted the Al-Asad regime and stood up against it.

Moreover our activists in Raqqa informed us that Daesh members, one in particular, high in the Daesh hierarchy, has recently left Syria, heading for Germany or the Netherland. These two countries were specifically mentioned. It can safely be assumed that he did not head for those two countries for reasons of peace making.

Thus, the civilized world, which advocates peace and human rights, should end the Al-Asad and ISIS era so that the world may benefit from stability and the people of the region may live in peace and security. Otherwise, more chaos and extremism will hit the whole world sooner or later.