This week’s lecture featured guest speaker Christin Lüttich, who is part of general management of Adopt a Revolution, a German-Syrian solidarity NGO. This NGO supports civil self-organization during and against the Assad regime, aiming to “create perspectives for peace and work for a life in freedom and dignity.” For example, the organization helps run secular schools in order to balance the influence of Islamist extremists, supports independent journalism to document human rights abuses and works to bring together people from different ethnic and religious group to help foster coexistence and understanding.
After elaborating on the organization’s work and the various projects she had experience with, Frau Lüttich shared her thoughts on working in a dangerous and somewhat controversial environment. She works with Syrian diaspora in Germany as well as with Syrians who are still in Syria and naturally are exposed to significant risks. As other guest speakers noted, she highlighted the importance of assuring that sources are safe and that if necessary, their identities are protected to prevent future complications and perhaps even threat to their lives. However, since 2012 her sources, who for the most part lived in areas where the opposition groups to the Assad regime ruled, stopped caring about hiding their real names and identities. I found that to be very interesting because it does imply that they felt a certain degree of safety and assurance that their safety will not change in the future. This is surprising for a country where territories are taken over constantly and multiple groups fight each other.
During the pandemic, the situation in Syria worsened even further, as people’s resources are drying up and there seems to be no prospect for improvement in the near future. In this context Frau Lüttich emphasized how important it is to stay in touch with sources and motivate and support partners as much as possible. I found this point crucial as it really drove home the importance of signaling to partners in the region that the partnership is not “just” based on interests, but rather that what the partnership builds is a network of trust and some might even say friendship. In addition, it is important to not portray partners merely as human right activists. She notes that she supports taking a political stance, which I personally found surprising, both because that might put partners in danger but also because my instinct would have suggested that in order to incorporate as many people as possible, such an NGO would refrain from stating a political view.
Then, Frau Lüttich elaborated on the importance of having good media relations, especially given that public interest in the situation in Syria decreased over time. The voice of Syrians has to continue to be heard. For that, she mentioned how she has to find an anchoring point to serve as reference, such as including former GDR activists, which Germans can relate to more. This obviously makes sense, though in some way I found it sad that we need such anchors in order for us to “care” about the fate of other people.
Finally, in what may be a more controversial thought, I was wondering whether an NGO such as Adopt a Revolution will expand its work to other regions and whether what it takes to start such an initiative is a civil war, as there are many dictators out there and many civilians who suffer from human rights violations. Even in Syria, Assad did not “suddenly” become a dictator overnight.
