The Republic of Fear
Newsweek.com
09-Apr-2011 (one comment)


His name is a pseudonym, adopted when he ran afoul of the secret police, his movements and whereabouts similarly a secret. The photo he uses for public consumption evokes an eerie sense of familiarity, but isn’t real. A computer-generated amalgam of many men, it is everyone and no one at all. Even his virtual presence is a specter, concealed behind encryption.

In a country where people have lived under surveillance and emergency law for decades, such precautions are necessary to stay out of prison, says Malath Aumran, a Syrian dissident who leads a phantomlike existence, trying to elude the government’s spies. The secret police, he says, “approach me in so many ways.”

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Darius Kadivar

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Recent protests in Syria have brought brutal government crackdown—and renewed paranoia among dissidents.



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