Remember Omar Aziz : Answering the international call in Copenhagen, DK

Remember Omar Aziz
Folkets Hus, 1st floor
16.02.2025 kl16-18:30

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We want to invite you to celebrate the fall of the Assad regime and remember one of the Syrian revolutionaries whose spirit is coming alive again as Syrians are trying to find new ways forward.

Omar Aziz was an anarchist and leading exponent of the local council movement during the Syrian revolution and was killed in one of Assad's prisons on 16th of February 2013. The local councils became a way for people to self-organize community protection and support to sustain the revolution. We think there's a lot to learn for us today from Omar Aziz and other Syrian revolutionaries that are carrying that spirit forward. An international initiative has called to remember his name and the ideas he helped popularize. Ideas that are now filling the streets again in spite of a former splinter group of al-Qaeda is now consolidating power in Damascus with the help of the Turkish regime. Other than rebuilding the country, Syrians thus continue to have challenges. But the streets are not silent, esp. women and religious minorities, and a new phase of the revolution might be opening up.

We will screen a special film called 'The War Show' recommended to us from comrades there. It's a film that shows the early days of the uprising through the eyes of radio host Obaidah Zytoon and her friends as they fall in love with the revolutionary spirit. The film shows both the nightmarish horrors of the regime, but is a deeply humanizing story that is rare in cinema. We see both daily life and the powerful chanting culture of the Syrian movement.

We will start the event with a short up-to-date video narrated by Elia Ayoub from the media collective From the Periphery to understand where Syrians stand today.

We will do a reading from Omar Aziz' seminal text "A discussion paper on Local Councils" and then see the film together.

Note: The films contain distressing visual and audio descriptions of Assad's network of secret prisons that have been called "human slaughterhouses", including murder, torture and sexual violence. We want to show the film, because we think it is important to know the story and think it is easier to see in the company of others. Consider if this is a good time for you to watch the films.

"FREEDOM FOREVER, AGAINST YOUR WILL ASSAD"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUgA4_00MKY

Read the international call here and learn more about Omar Aziz and the revolutionary movement he was part of: https://rememberomaraziz.net

Program:

16:00 - Intro and screening of short film 'The Fall of the Regime' (14 min)
16:20 - Reading 'A discussion paper on Local Councils'
16:30 - Screening of feature film 'The War Show' (100 min)
18:30 - Thanks for today

Sted

Folkets Hus
Stengade 50
2200 København N