The Winds Of Change

In Syria there is a wind of change blowing, well a light breeze anyway, and some freedoms are being allowed in the radio at least .... in 2005, the government passed a law allowing private stations to be set up.

Honey al-Sayyed - al-Madina FM

Sham FM's daily talk show Hiwar al-Youm (Today's Discussion) regularly focuses on local government issues, with phone-ins and interviews with politicians, including ministers.

Honey al-Sayyed, who presents the morning show on al-Madina FM, says there's more freedom to speak out now.

"We tackle a lot of topics from sex education to child abuse. We can talk about everything - except politics and religion." 

And Ministers agree, "The fact in itself that Syrian media has all the freedoms it needs to openly criticise the government, is a tremendous improvement in Syrian society," says Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Dardari

However lest we get too excited, there are still imprisonments for anyone deemed to have gone too far, and analysts suggest that the owners are not interested in freedom of speech.

"The majority of them are businessmen. They have no cause to defend [so] they run very easy, non-problematic programmes."

So whilst the winds of change may only be allowing more puppet stations, from these little acorns the possibility of something else may exist. But I wouldn't hold my breath waiting.

Update: As events subsequently have shown .... liberalisation was not on the regimes agenda. And as for Honey al-Sayyed of al-Madina FM ... well her popular "Good Morning, Syria" show, which drew millions of listeners each day attracted far too much regime and opposition interest.  

Born to Syrian parents who raised her in Kuwait they were displaced by the Iraqi invasion of that country, so they moved to Egypt, where she attended Cairo American College and earned an undergraduate degree from the Lebanese American University, and then moved to Syria. 

But following the start of the protests and uprising, the government and station owners told her that any protesters are to be called "terrorists" at all times. When any listener calls in to praise the president, you must agree in flowery terms. When any suffering civilians beg you to describe their plight, you are to ignore them. Whilst the rebel movements had started killing any media personalities it deemed as pro-government.

So in very late 2011, under the pretence of pursuing her studies she fled to the USA using a still valid visa, knowing that she would likely never be able to return. For fear for her family, who still lived in Damascus, she didn't admit she was in permanent exile, and for months the station still ran trailers for her show. She supported the calls for reform via a blog and her social media accounts, but was embarrassed that she had believed that he regime had been capable of reform. She had got away with comments about corruption and promoting a secular outlook on life until the uprising, but then the shutters came firmly down.

Now, she is still in exile in the USA but is now a citizen, and is an associate fellow at the Geneva Center for Security Policy (GCSP), and holds a master’s degree in international affairs from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. She runs courses courses at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. She co-founded Radio SouriaLi, an online radio station with more than 500,000 listeners in Syria and the diaspora, which began with three other collaborators who were also in exile in different countries, and now includes 27 people in 17 countries.

She is also the founder and CEO of Media and Arts for Peace (MAP), begun in 2018, and would under any other circumstances be someone her nation would be proud of ..... but in her home country and the Arab world generally not so much.