ROAR Magazine The cycle of protests that collectively became known as the “Arab Spring” were triggered by a desperate event outside a government building in the small Tunisian city of Sidi Bouzid in late December 2010, when Mohamad Bouazizi set fire to himself in an act of protest. Mass demonstrations followed across Tunisia and quickly…
The struggle for life: An interview with Yassin al-Haj Saleh
al-Jumhuriya [Editor’s note: The below interview was originally published in French by Le Monde on 12 March, 2021. It is published here in English, with minor edits, with the permission of its author.] Today, ten years after the outbreak of the Syrian uprising, how many “Syrias” currently exist? There is the territory held by the…
We, As Syrians, Are Allowed to be ‘Witnesses’
Surviving monstrosities: An interview with Yassin al-Haj Saleh
Al Jumhuriya The below is an interview with the Syrian writer and Al-Jumhuriya co-founder Yassin al-Haj Saleh, conducted by Marina Naprushkina, a Belarusian artist and democracy activist. The interview took place in Berlin in April 2020. Marina Naprushkina: Yassin, I would like to ask you so much about the Syrian revolution; the war and the…
Dissidents of the left: In conversation with Yassin al-Haj Saleh
Al-Jumhuriya - Andy Heintz The below is one of a series of interviews conducted by the journalist Andy Heintz due to be published as a book, Dissidents of the International Left, in May 2019. Yassin al-Haj Saleh is a Syrian writer, former political prisoner, and co-founder of Al-Jumhuriya, where he continues to contribute regularly. His latest book is The…
International Viewpoint: Interview with Yassin Al-Haj Saleh
International Viewpoint Born in 1961 in Raqqa, the Syrian writer and dissident Yassin Al-Haj Saleh spent a considerable part of his life in the jails of the Assad regime. Once again pursued by the regime for his revolutionary activity, he went into exile in Turkey shortly before his wife Samira Khalil, a tireless communist and…
Muftah: An Interview with Yassin al Haj Saleh
Muftah - Andy Heintz Yassin al Haj Saleh is one of the most prominent Syrian dissident intellectuals. He was arrested at the age of nineteen for his membership in the Syrian Communist Party and remained in prison for more than sixteen years. When the Syrian revolution began in 2011, Yassin, then working in Damascus, went…
Revolution, counterrevolution, and imperialism in Syria
The International Socialist Review - Interviewed by Ashley Smith Yassin al-Haj Saleh is one of the pivotal figures in the Syrian Revolution. He has a long history of activism in the country. Arrested by the Syrian regime in 1980 for the crime of political activism and membership of the Syrian Communist Party (Political Bureau) while…
Meeting Yassin al-Haj Saleh, Syria’s leading intellectual dissident
Emran Feroz - The New Arab Yassin al-Haj Saleh is a leading Syrian writer, activist and political dissident. A fervent Marxist voice in a represseive regime, al-Haj Saleh has spent many years in prison; jailed by Bashar al-Assad's father, he languished in cells from 1980 to 1996. After the Syrian uprising broke out, Al-Haj Saleh…
The Triumph of Politicide
Diwan Carnegie Endowment for Carnegie Middle East Center - Interviewed by Michael Young In an interview, Yassin al-Haj Saleh describes how Syrians have been denied any meaning for their suffering. Yassin al-Haj Saleh is a Syrian intellectual who has just published The Impossible Revolution: Making Sense of the Syrian Tragedy, an English translation of an earlier…