Rasha Omran

Rasha Omran   

Born in Tartous, Syria, in 1964, Rasha Omran belongs to a culturally progressive community of writers, musicians and professional artists. She studied literature at Damascus University and founded the Al-Sindiyan Festival of Literature and Culture in her hometown in the late 1990s, which she directed for 16 years.  A well-known intellectual and advocate of reform, she publicly supported the uprising at the beginning of the Syrian revolution: “This is a dictatorial regime, [….] How can I support a government that kills its own citizens?” She participates in demonstrations, publishes her disagreement and speaks out against Assad. Assad is “not a dictator, he’s just a gang leader” she writes. She is also the one who coined the phrase “the international silence on Syria is deafening.” Threatened along with her family by the Syrian regime, she went into exile in Cairo in 2012 where, in September 2012, along with four other Syrian women, she began a hunger strike in front of the Arab League headquarters in Tahrir Square to ask the Arab League to support the revolutionaries and pressure Assad to end human rights violations in Syria. She has lived in Cairo since 2012 where she continues to write and publish her poetry, as well as three weekly articles for online Arab media where she comments on political and cultural news.