A few words
About Us
nophotozone
Who we are?
We are a group of Syrian non-violent activists. Through our direct exposure or the exposure of one of our beloved ones to arrest and being disappeared, we feel that it is our duty to be active in carrying this issue and keeping alive the voice of those people.
We work to promote legal and human rights awareness on issues of enforced disappearance and detention, and we provide direct consultation to the families of detainees and enforced disappearances, regardless of which body has arrested or hidden them.
We established this organisation in honor of the memory of the Syrian-Palestinian activist and programmer Bassel Khartabil Safadi, who was arrested by the Military Security in March 2012. He was executed by the Military Field Court in October 2015. Bassel was the person who came with the idea of the organization and he chose the name of it before his death. We relied in major ways on efforts that have been made, which resulted in the “FREEBASSEL” campaign.
You can reach the archive page and the official page on Facebook.
We know that we cannot bring back those who have gone, but there are others who deserve hard work to save them. You can be with us wherever you are, by documenting the stories, supporting the families of the detainees and the disappeared and raising our voice.
We faithfully monitor our solidarity with the families of the detainees and the enforceable disappeared, and we believe that the means of assistance are many.
Join us, so that our answer to the question of who we are is: Everyone who believes in the humanity of human beings and feels that the disappeared and the detainee and his/ her family have the right to truth, justice, life and dreams.
We provide our services to all victims and their families regardless of their political and religious beliefs, social and cultural backgrounds, regions, genders and sexual identities and orientations, with the maximum respect for human rights, dignity, nonviolence activism and freedom of expression.
The brief of Lawyer Nour Ghazi (CEO of Nophotozone) in The UN Security Council in 2020
Why?
In conflicts and struggles in general, compromises are accompanied by reconciliations thereby avoiding major issues, discussion of which stakeholders maintain would impede the political process.
The world has witnessed many wars and conflicts, and history has recognised that the open wounds of this war won’t be bandaged; because there is often one issue remaining unresolved.
The cruelty of wars is that it hides our beloved people and tries to get us used to their absence, because we feel the pain of this wound and know it, and because there someone is trying to keep this wound unresolved and open. Therefore we wanted to help to keep it in the light, so that people remember the wounds that have no voice.
Syria continues to live with the system of detention and suffers this every day. Detainees in the notorious prisons continue to suffer abuses, torture that violates human rights and values. The issue of detention remains the primary cause of long-lived disaster following the wars, due to enforced disappearances and ignorance of the fate of beloved ones.
This initiative starts with reviving the memory of detainees and the disappeared people, supporting their cause in all possible forums and platforms, supporting their families with legal services, and spreading the true story in a legitimate way to public opinion, in the knowledge of the extent of de facto rights that always deviate from the law.
- For a mother who still waits for the return of her son or daughter at the door of time…
For a girl who dried her love in memory books waiting for her beloved to return…
For a daughter waiting for her father to come back, from his journey like they said, on a wooden horse…
For an innocent child arrested with his mother…
For the end of an agony which will not be finished by the smiles of warlords when they all win and shake hands…
We will continue to tell the tales that were woven by the fingerprints of tyrants.
For the sake of a people who do not want to live in an erased memory, the voice of the detainee and the disappeared should not fade away.