Fadi

In 2009, an outbreak of cholera in my area was seriously neglected by the government. This stimulated a group of friends to establish a Facebook group to spark campaign. As a medical student in that period, I felt it was my duty to provide the real definition of cholera especially when the Syrian Directorate of Health in my district was claiming that it wasn't cholera but just a case of acute diarrhoea. I also included criticism of the governmental neglect in my writing. As a result, my mother and father were questioned and threatened by the Syrian security service. The investigators then came to my house and told me to stop - otherwise I would be sent to jail.

In the final months of 2010, I volunteered with a humanitarian project to rescue displaced drought victims in southern Syria. We taught and played with children, gave them some gifts and hope. The Syrian security followed us to the camps several times and threatened us to stop. In the first quarter of 2011 the project stopped as a result of serious threats to our group. The security services also put pressure on the community we were helping; and many of them were worried. The security were worried that word would get out about the conditions these people were living in and this would expose the neglect of the government.

Early in 2011, I participated in demonstrations to support the Egyptian and Libyan uprisings in front of their respective embassies in Damascus. This was the first time I cried in the streets of Damascus, when we sang for freedom. Two lasting memories stay with me from this time. The first when I was nearly crushed by a car driven by the security services. The second, when I was running to escape I saw a girl caught and pulled to ground by a Syrian policeman.

In 2011 I volunteered for an environmental society. While we were trying to keep Syria clean and healthy, we were monitored by a security agent who once asked the head of the society if we supported the Green party in Europe. In Syria, this is the mentality of the security services.

In April 2011, I participated in a strike at the hospital where I was studying for my Masters, we were asking for the release of our arrested colleagues. The following month, I was arrested during a civilian secular demonstration against the Al Assad regime in the heart of Damascus. Jail was 4 days in hell… I was insulted, whipped, kicked and electrocuted. In prison, I faced my first real medical exam as a doctor. On the first night a soldier, who had been cursing, kicking and taking photographs of us, was feeling pain in his abdomen. I looked him in the eyes and I saw a patient, not another person. I examined and diagnosed him with irritable bowel syndrome. I wrote the perscription for him on a piece of carton paper. I also advised him how and what to eat. My friends looked at me as if to say "what are you doing?", but for the rest of that night I didn't see that soldier beating or cursing anybody.

While in prison my hypertension medicine was confiscated, meaning my health condition grew worse and I had to ask for it. The day after helping the soldier, I was refused my medicine and sent to the prison doctor. The doctor was abusive and was not administering the medicine correctly (he measured my blood pressure from my right hand), when I noted it out to him, he called me a donkey asserting that the right hand was closer to the heart!

After I was released from jail I was broken and scared. It was difficult but I volunteered with a secret medical network aimed to help the protesters and other political activists who were denied medical care by the Syrian regime. I did so because I believe that everybody has the right to receive medical treatment regardless of their sex, opinion, race, religion, financial situation, or any other basis, as a doctor my enemy is the disease.

I finally fled to Jordan in 2012. I tried to attend to the medical needs of the Syrian refugees by visiting them at home trying to find out whom is sick and helping them to locate nearby clinic which could provide free medical care. For me it was so difficult to do all these things because I have hypertension and have an obsessive and anxious personality. I remember the sweating and the palpitation that I used to have on the road in Syria and I remember how I was looking around me with fear! Maybe without adrenaline, I could have done more.

I don't think that you need someone to tell you how dangerous life in Syria was. People are killed in Syria for things you couldn't believe or imagine, a discussion could end in death under torture. Before the uprising life in Syria was so difficult for the opposition and the death was hidden in the cells. Now, death visible in the streets and on our screens, people no longer live in Syria, they are simply trying to stay alive. Try to picture the most brutal and dangerous scenario you can imagine, I can tell you that human rights activists in Syria face worse than this everyday.