Bassel Shehadeh

Bassel Shehadeh was a Syrian Christian film maker, producer, IT engineer, environmental and cultural activist, and a well-known civil activist during the Syrian uprising in 2011 to 2012. He was a pioneer in organising peaceful protests in Damascus denouncing the government’s crackdown of the Arab Spring. Shehadeh was arrested while protesting with fellow artists in the al-Midan neighbourhood of Damascus. His camera captured and documented the assaults and bombardments conducted by the Syrian regime's forces on the city of Homs. He was killed during a government assault in the neighbourhood of al-Safsafa in Homs¹. Shehadeh was born in Damascus on January 31, 1984, to a family of intellectuals. He had one brother, Alaa, and one sister, Maria. After graduating high school, Shehadeh enrolled at the school of Information Technology at the University of Damascus in 2001. He graduated with a degree in Information Technology in 2006, majoring in Artificial Intelligence. Shehadeh then took a break from his field to study Archaeology and work with the United Nations at one of their offices in Damascus¹. Shehadeh developed a passion for filming, photography, and music. He managed to produce several short movies including: Saturday Morning Gift, a short documentary reflecting the suffering that children experienced in the 2006 Lebanon War; Carrying Eid to Camps, a short documentary about a charitable project that Shehadeh participated in to bring the joy of Eid to children affected by the Syrian drought living in relief camps near Damascus; and Brakes, a documentary that was awarded the "TAMKEEN" grant for the best Syrian Documentary in the DOX BOX 2011 Film festival¹. In 2011, Shehadeh received a Fulbright scholarship to pursue a master's degree in Film production at Syracuse University. He left after being released from jail for participating in a protest at the al-Midan neighborhood in Damascus. Shehadeh was enrolled at Syracuse for the fall semester of 2011. He travelled extensively while in the United States, filming and photographing the events of Occupy Wall Street, while also conducting interviews with several American intellectuals. “Singing to Freedom” produced by Shehadeh in 2011, featured interviews of many prominent intellectuals, including Noam Chomsky, on their views of peaceful resistance against dictatorial governments. Upon finishing the fall semester at Syracuse, Shehadeh made the decision to sacrifice his scholarship and returned to his peaceful activism in Syria¹². Back in Syria, Shehadeh trained other activists and citizen journalists how to shoot and edit their video footage. He eventually ended up in the city of Homs, a site of some of Syria's most brutal violence. Shehadeh and four other activists were out filming recently when government troops began shelling an area where rebels had taken refuge inside people's homes. He was the only one who did not survive. That night, the bodies were washed and shrouded in white sheets, and a small group marched them through the alleyways of Homs².