School Wall: Syrian City and Graffiti Kids

school wall: And whoever spray-painted the phrase it your turn next, Doctor Bashar al-Assad was our modern Gavrilo Princip, the archduke assassin, according to Globe and Mail. Investigation Read the story of Naief Abazid and the graffiti kids who sparked the Syrian civil war Related Canada year of welcoming Syrian refugees, by the numbers Related Mark Mac Kinnon return to Syria Zaatari refugee camp Except I didn t know Naief Abazid name when I started. In our imperfect metaphor, a phrase scrawled on a school wall in the southern Syrian city of Daraa on Feb. 16, 2011 provoking a violent reaction from the regime was the shot heard round the world, the moment when everything started. Nor did I know that he had been 14 years old at the time, apolitical, and nudged into painting the graffiti by the older kids who were with him that evening. I started by reaching out to anyone on Facebook and Linked In to anyone with names similar to the 18 on my list. All I had was a list I d found on a Arabic website with 18 names of the graffiti boys on it Naief says 23 teens, including him, were eventually arrested and tortured by the Assad regime, provoking the first anti-government protests in Daraa . I had no phone numbers or addresses for any of them. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.