SOHR interview | Syrian actor and director Wahah Raheb: Solution in Syria passes through international decisions ….. Stability wouldn’t take place without political transfer of power

Ambiguity still prevails the situation in Syria with the crisis is getting more complicated amid running the presidential elections that could be repeated according to Russia in case a transitional stage would be agreed upon by all internal and external sides.

The price of the continuous ambiguity cost the Syrian people fatigue and hunger. The people fed up with the international promises of enforcing a political settlement and ending the ongoing struggle and war.

Syrian actor and director Wahah Raheb in an interview with SOHR said, “solution in Syrian starts by implementing the international decisions that has consensus from all the conflicting parties and the big powers.”

Question: Despite the sufferings and tragedies that the Syrian people have been through since 2011 after militarizing and Islamizing the revolution, do you see victory is looming?

Answer: Militarizing and Islamizing the revolution have pushed it towards an unequal battle by a regime equipped with lethal arms and warplanes that are decisive in any war, and that is supported and protected militarily from some powers and boosted by media which is considered as the most dangerous weapons in modern history. That an unequal battle was directed against an unarmed people who was even deprived of real media support and also from anti-rocket system for protection from extermination and for preserving the freed areas.

Meanwhile, the Islamists and Salafists have been armed to control the revolution leadership corners in order to scare the world that is plagued by Islamophobia for the interest of a regime that claims being secular, to end the revolution that wouldn’t bring benefits to any of the world leaders even the allied forces as they believe.

The Syrian people have suffered expensive costs to achieve their freedom, and they have resisted several-forces coalition. It is worth noting that several foreign occupations have exploited the Syrian lands and wealth, while the Syrian people pay everything dear either the blood of their sons or their properties.

So far, the people have been resisting and chant in the name of revolution for freedom without weapons against the tyrant regime and the occupying forces. The people bet on victory no matter the time longs.

Question: We all know that artists and cultural persons have great capabilities for persuasion, influencing and transferring the voice of the people, how do you evaluate, as being a revolutionist artist, the role of the Syrian artist since the revolution has erupted?

Answer: Artists have a pioneering indispensable role in influencing and persuading the people. So, all conflicting parties have tirelessly sought to lure the artists’ voices especially by the regime who paid lots of funds to buy their conscience to cover its crimes and fraud facts.

Meanwhile, many other artists have backed the revolution, but the honest intellectuals have faced poverty and hunger and their voices have been silenced since they don’t have a free media platform to express themselves. Media is a weapon that runs war in modern history, and it is an available weapon for the regime not for the revolution sons who are governed by limited poor channels that couldn’t work their innovative and cultural energies without proxy of the funders.

Question: Some of the Syrian intellectuals who sided with the people and the revolution say there is no meaning for the artists’ message in a country that is overwhelmed by the ideas of a scared president with sacred words, party and army, what is your opinion?

Answer: Words that emerged from dreams and ideas are the essence of life. The idea doesn’t die as long as the dreams don’t feed it. When the regime’s head via an idea has imposed holiness on his presence and sayings, the people’s freedom and dignity were harmed. The Syrian people have crushed that scared idea when that destroyed their fears of the regime and have proved that the regime’s holiness was based on terrorizing the people by violence and silencing them.

Undoubtedly, there is no sacredness on the ground where the regime has killed and shed blood of its people via machine of war and warplanes that are supported by one of the world’s big powers against an unarmed people who are deprived of arms at the level of the regime.
The Syrian regime is a criminal regime that killed and deported half of its people while controlling the other half via terrorizing and frightening them. I wonder how this regime could be deemed as sacred!

No one could deny that the tyrant regimes have become an objective for criticism and irony of the world.

Question: You have used a novel “barrier of coffins” that has been published recently as a director and an actor in drawing a picture that described sufferings of the Syrian females in times of peace and war, please explain the tragedy of the Syrian female that has been betrayed by all.

Answer: The novel sheds light on the regime practices for harming his people before and after the revolution, and the human slaughterhouses that are known as prisons that have naked the people of their humanity and transfer them into salves and tools for serving the regime interests.

The regime prisons have turned the people into dead people who carry their coffin in each road they step transferring them into the other bank of life or put them at the thin line between life and death.

The sufferings that put the people’s dignity and lives at the death barriers could be women who have been oppressed by all sides and even by their some phycological disease like necrophobia that constitutes a cycle of recurrent deaths. In most cases women are marginalized and don’t pose any threats or dangers, but the double-edged oppression was their big motivation to destroy their marginalization in a positive or negative way that could cause extremism.

I have tried to activate all my senses and artists’ hobbies, either as a director or an actor for serving the events and characters of the novel. The descriptive narration of the novel may reflect a cinema picture that could approach reality as I tried to embody all the feelings on the papers by integrating all elements of audio-visual communication that made from the special novels a material for valuable movies.

I used my vision as an actor and director to devise details of the Syrian female tragedies by penetrating their feelings and internal conflicts with a vision that monitor closely all kinds of tortures and oppression practiced on them either by the society, family, school and all the state institutions.

I tried to build an integrated world for my marginalized starring actor though it was created out of imagination, but it was a flesh and blood character that I lived her sufferings and psychological diseases.

I lived the details of the main character from my imagination as a director and a writer and my feelings as an artist that are able to embody all the characters and live their sorrow, sufferings and diseases as if they are my real pains. I tried to deliver her cries to release the pains that inhabited my bodies for a long time after I have read the testimonies of the arrested females who had encountered savage torture inside the regime prions.

I tried to focus on the double-suffering female because most of artwork gave much attention to male prisoners.

Question: Freedom is the ideal objective aspired by the people, and when oppression and tyranny prevail, the value of life against freedom weakened, what is your opinion?

Answer: The day that we have destroyed the barrier of fears and chanted for freedom and dignity, was the real birthday of me and the people who were like a genie who escaped a bottle, and no one could take that giant back to his humiliated prison or let him live again the life of animals that are just be fed and ordered by the leadership of the murders and those who have destroyed their lives and their sons’ future.

I have never and will not regret restoring my life no matter how long our dreams of victory and freedom have been delayed.
As part of the freedom revolution, I found the objective of my life and I was granted the greatest value of my life in front of which everything has no price.

Question: The solution in Syrian, ending the war and holding all the criminals accountable, how could this happen and through which channels?

Answer: The solution and stability wouldn’t be achieved without full-power political transfer that will end the tyranny of al-Assad regime and the rule of al-Assad, and put the bases of a civil democratic country that deals with all on equal foot. This could lay the foundation of depending on a new constitution of the country that is devoted to promote the principles of human rights, justice and equity among the people of one country no matter their different religious, ethnic, sexual and ideological differences are. It will also achieve transitional justice and held all criminals accountable, and will restructure the army, security, judiciary and legislative service, as well as reactivating the real role of these institutions in protecting the people and the borders of the country from any foreign forces, not just protecting a regime leader who give priority to his chair rather than people. The man-show regime has persevered upon the debris of the people, but the powers that claimed to supervise the search for a solution seemed not concerned with the interests of the Syrian people. On The contrary, those powers push for remaining and strengthening the current regime without any intention to change it which keeps the country in a state of inflammable and escalated conflicts that facilitated division of the country.

Question: Supposedly, you have like all Syrians have followed the presidential elections that resulted in the regime winning by 95 percent, how do you read those elections and how could it be legitimate while only a quarter of the people participated in it?

Answer: That farcical show that was named as election is illegitimate because the regime has lost all legitimacy. The election is a fraud and humiliating process not just for all the Syrians who cast their votes amid the silence of the world but is also humiliated for everything named as elections and all the principles of freedom and humanitarian dignity that are publicly violated. The world claims freedom while only launching some condemnation and rejections with real willingness for change that could restore the credibility and transparency to the election process and the principles of democracy and human rights

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The regime head has proven he doesn’t deserve to be a legitimate president of the country or even for a small part of the people because he considered the opposition as traitors.

Question: Do you think the idea of forming a military council could be the solution to the Syrian crisis?

Answer: Whoever wants to settle the Syrian crisis will find the way in applying Geneva decisions that garnered consensus of all the conflicting parties and world powers. Achieving transitional stage with full ruling powers would end the tyranny and the criminal ruler, away from the maneuvers and the state of manipulating the international resolutions, sometimes via inflaming the weakness of the opposition unity or via adding terrorism to the former baskets to blurring the resolutions and the expensive people time and blood.
The maneuvers have also allowed the penetration of Astana and other conferences that wasted the rights, unity and the internationally agreed-upon achievements of the people. Also, manipulating the international resolutions has taken place via giving priority to the failed constitutional committee above the necessities of the transitional ruling that was supposed to produce a constitutional committee through people and not occupation referendum.
It is worth noting that the idea of forming a military council would not be enforced because there is no real intention to find any exist in light of wasting the time in order to continue the factors of struggle and chaos that have enabled the occupying forces to divide and exploit our wealth.

Even if the idea of forming a military council authority seems necessary, it should not be formed as a ruling council that reproduce a tyrant regime, but as an ally to protect the democratic political transition and achieve the country’s strategic policies, maintain the constitution and the freedoms along with paving a secured road for managing an election process and end war and chaos of violence and weapons.