A teenager is documenting Syria’s Eastern Ghouta siege on Twitter
Like many his age, 15-year-old Muhammad Najem is active on social media. But it’s not selfies with friends or Instagram-worthy pictures of his food he’s sharing. Since December 7, the Syrian teenager has been updating his Twitter profile with photos and videos of the devastation and wreckage in Eastern Ghouta, one of the last rebel-held enclaves in the country that has been torn apart by a civil war since 2011.
The ongoing conflict between Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad and multiple rebel groups has claimed more than 4,50,000 lives and displaced several millions. Over the years, Assad has overrun many of the strongholds captured by rebels but the siege in Eastern Ghouta, close to the Syrian capital of Damascus, has been going on since 2013. After a brief lull, it escalated once again in February, when Assad’s forces, backed by Russia, began air strikes in the rebel-held enclave, imperiling its 400,000 residents. About 500 people have been killed since the resurgence and residents have taken refuge in underground shelters, where they have little access to food and water. Through his posts, Najem urges the international community to take notice of his ravaged city and country.
Pro-Assad accounts have claimed that Najem’s account is fake and is being used as a propagnda tool for anti-Assad forces, Buzzfeed
reported. The online publication spoke to Najem on Twitter via direct message. He told them he envisions himself as a “small journalist” from Eastern Ghouta.
With little official information and few on-ground reporters, social media has emerged as an important source of information on the conflict, but the pitfall is that the authenticity of its contents cannot be fully verified. Earlier, during the lengthy siege of Aleppo that ended with the Assad regime declaring victory in December 2016, seven-year-old Bana al-Abed had acquired wide recognition after she documented the horrors of the war through her Twitter account, run by her English-speaking mother.