To those who did not bow down

As volunteers of Operazione Colomba, alongside the Syrian people since 2013, we must participate in the euphoria following the surprising fall of the Assad regime in Syria. A regime that lasted 53 years and gripped the lives of three generations of Syrians.

In these crucial days that are overtaking this country, heart and bridge between the Mediterranean East and Mesopotamia, we echo the stories of pain, desperation, anger, but also resistance, resilience, patience, which we have especially met in Lebanon, but also in Syria, Turkey, Greece, Germany, France and Italy.

Our thoughts go out to these people we chose to meet and that came to life in everyone who has welcomed us and who has trusted us with their story, even as they lived it first-hand, on their own skin.

To those who confided in us “Unfortunately life has assigned us this fate, we only want a future for our children”, aware of having been caught up in the events that brought them to a life as refugees.

To M., a young man from Homs, exhausted after nearly 10 years living as a refugee in Lebanon, who decided to go back to Syria only to be forcibly conscripted, and then escaped once the regime fell, returning back home to his family.

To S., who came to Italy through the Humanitarian Corridors to try and turn a new leaf, still thinking of her brother, who disappeared in 2011. The doors of those Syrian prisons, finally open, have been able to gift unexpected reunions, and just as many disappointments and betrayed hopes.

To M., who, facing deportations and threats, never stopped connecting with other young refugees and dedicating herself to supporting the community, always taking the initiative and thinking of the future.

It is individuals like them that make up the people who, now more than ever, need their voices to be heard, not only because they are going and working through a collective and personal trauma, but because they have been waiting this entire time to even just begin to think of returning to their own land.

At this moment unimaginable on the eve, in which it would be easy to reduce the entire matter to geopolitical dynamics, we cannot refrain from standing by the Syrians to lend them a listening ear and support those who have fiercely guarded the cause that has brought them to fight back against the regime and who, now that it is time to rebuild and create a free Syria, cannot remain in the shadows.