The #Freebassel Effect

Don’t Give Up. Online Activism Is Still Powerful.

- Eric Steuer

RECENTLY I LEARNED, along with the rest of the world, the heartbreaking news that my friend and colleague Bassel Khartabil was dead—and in fact had been dead for two years. He was secretly executed by the Syrian government after having been imprisoned since 2012. While those of us in Bassel’s global community of friends held out hope that the free culture advocate would eventually return home safely, his covert murder at the hands of the Assad regime was a scenario many of us had long feared.

We kept these thoughts to ourselves, though, as if sharing them might make the worst case possibility more possible. Instead, we focused on doing what we could to honor Bassel, motivated by the faint hope that by creating attention, we might free our friend. Or, if we didn’t, at least we could further the causes he so dearly believed in.

Bassel wasn’t particularly radical, but he believed the Syrian people should have a basic understanding of the technology and tools that many of us take for granted. “Authoritarian regimes feel the dangers of technology on their continuity,” Bassel wrote to a friend in a letter from prison. “And they should be afraid of that, as code is much more than tools. It’s an education that opens youthful minds, and moves nations forward.”