Rifugiati siriani. Quando l’erba soffre…

“Quando gli elefanti vanno in guerra, è l’erba che soffre” – dice un proverbio keniota.

Parte da questa frase il documentario che Iara Lee ha girato al confine tra Siria e Turchia, intitolato, per l’appunto, The Suffering Grasses.

Nel maggio 2012 la Lee ha intervistato dei rifugiati siriani nei campi profughi in Turchia. Alcuni degli intervistati si sono identificati come militanti, altri sono attivisti impegnati nel movimento non violento, ma la maggioranza sta solo cercando di vivere in pace e di fuggire alla violenza nel proprio Paese.

La Lee ha cercato di tracciare un quadro della rivolta popolare senza precedenti scoppiata in Siria, a partire dalle esperienze delle persone che ha incontrato. E a spiegare i motivi per cui la rivoluzione in Siria ha bisogno di ritornare alle sue radici non violente. Come ha scritto in un suo articolo sull’Huffington Post mentre preparava il film:

Most [refugees] have witnessed unspeakable brutality; watched their friends and family killed, raped, or disappeared; and, in the face of such horrors, see no room for negotiating with the regime anymore. And so they find themselves abandoning the peaceful revolution and supporting the Free Syrian Army (FSA), a nebulous entity composed of defected soldiers, angry civilians, and, sometimes, plain criminals. The FSA began as a collection of soldiers who refused to fire on peacefully protesting civilians, who then left the army and began to form militias aimed at protecting these demonstrators. Soon, this purely defensive function gave way to small raids and ambushes of government troops, thereby fuelling the regime’s claims that protestors are not peaceful, and that they cannot be dealt with peacefully.

Allowing violence to overtake the revolution would represent a wholesale descent into passion, an abandonment of strategic thought into what could be seen as miniature version of a regime itself, a regime that brutalizes, lies, and has lost its humanity altogether. Such a revolution would not bode well for a successor regime. Already there is some evidence of this taking place. Rumours abound that tell of more desperate members of the opposition mimicking their ugly opponent […].

While most Syrians desire a complete return to the peaceful revolution that began over a year ago, the regime seems quite content with an armed opposition, and rightly so: Assad has been the recipient of billions of dollars in sophisticated Russian military hardware, the kind that no rebel group, or at least not this rebel group, could hope to match. […]

Amidst the violence, there are signs of hope. Women travel through checkpoints from Damascus to Homs, smuggling medicine under their abbayas; classrooms are improvised wherever they can be found so that children can continue their education despite the disruptive violence surrounding them; children write poetry and make drawings of a dictator-gone-mad who, contrary to mythology, does not stand up to the Israelis or to the Americans but uses his tanks to kill his own people. Peaceful resistance does not mean no resistance, nor does it mean simply paper banners in the street. Many refugees that I spoke to, private citizens of Syria with no interest in political power, think peaceful direct action, like general strikes, are capable of paralyzing the country and wreaking havoc on the regime. Should the revolution return to its peaceful origins, it is likely to grow in size and intensity.

The Suffering grasses cerca di esplorare il conflitto siriano attraverso la sofferenza dei civili che sono stati minacciati, torturati, violentati, uccisi e costretti a trovare rifugio nello squallore dei campi profughi. In tutti i conflitti, grandi e piccoli, sono sempre i civili – donne e bambini, famiglie e comunità intere – che soffrono per i giochi dei potenti e rimangono intrappolati nel fuoco incrociato.

“Quando gli elefanti vanno in guerra, è l’erba che soffre”. Questo documentario è sugli elefanti, ma è fatto per l’erba.

Chiunque sia interessato a ospitare un evento di solidarietà per la Siria e voglia proiettare il documentario The Suffering Grasses, può contattare l’indirizzo email: info@culturesofresistance.org.