Speaking Freely: Lina Attalah

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This interview has been edited for length and clarity.*

Jillian York: Welcome, let’s start here. What does free speech or free expression mean to you personally?

Lina Attalah: Being able to think without too many calculations and without fear.

York: What are the qualities that make you passionate about the work that you do, and also about telling stories and utilizing your free expression in that way? 

Well, it ties in with your first question. Free speech is basically being able to express oneself without fear and without too many calculations. These are things that are not granted, especially in the context I work in. I know that it does not exist in any absolute way anywhere, and increasingly so now, but even more so in our context, and historically it hasn’t existed in our context. So this has also drawn me to try to unearth what is not being said, what is not being known, what is not being shared. I guess the passion came from that lack more than anything else. Perhaps, if I lived in a democracy, maybe I wouldn’t have wanted to be a journalist. 

York: I’d like to ask you about Syria, since you just traveled there. I know that you’re familiar with the context there in terms of censorship and the Internet in particular. What do you see in terms of people’s hopes for more expression in Syria in the future?

I think even though we share an environment where freedom of expression has been historically stifled, there is an exception to Syria when it comes to the kind of controls there have been on people’s ability to express, let alone to organize and mobilize. I think there’s also a state of exception when it comes to the price that had to be paid in Syrian prisons for acts of free expression and free speech. This is extremely exceptional to the fabric of Syrian society. So going there and seeing that this condition was gone, after so much struggle, after so much loss, is a situation that is extremely palpable. From the few days I spent there, what was clear to me is that everybody is pretty much uncertain about the future, but there is an undoubted relief that this condition is gone for now, this fear. It literally felt like it’s a lower sky, sort of repressing people’s chests somehow, and it’s just gone. This

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