On October 27, humanity celebrates World Day for Audiovisual Heritage, established by UNESCO to emphasize the importance of protecting and preserving the visual and audible memory of peoples from loss or distortion.
It is a day of memory, of the voice that documented history when politics remained silent, and of the image that preserved the truth when the news betrayed it.
The Syrian Future Movement believes that today’s new Syria, after the end of tyranny and the beginning of the phase of national reconstruction, takes on an exceptional dimension. The millions of clips recorded since 2011 represent the memory of contemporary Syrian consciousness and the voice of a generation that wrote its history with their own hands and lenses. These recordings, which documented the revolution, also documented the transformation of the Syrian person from a subject of news to a creator of the narrative.
The Syrian Future Movement sees this day as an opportunity to establish the principle of memory as a sovereign right and to consider the audiovisual archive of the Syrian revolution as part of the collective national heritage, not individual property or media material.
It is the memory of a nation stripped of its official narrative, reshaped by its people through sound and image.
From this perspective, the Syrian Future Movement calls for:
- Establishing a National Center for Syrian Audiovisual Memory to preserve the archives of the revolution and the transitional period in accordance with the standards of transitional justice and human rights.
- Incorporating the concept of “visual memory” into cultural and educational curricula to raise generations who understand that images are documents of sovereignty and dignity.
- Designating October 27 as an annual national occasion to celebrate the memory of Syrians during and after the revolution, and a day of loyalty to documentation and to the image that preserved the truth when words were besieged.
The Syrian Future Movement believes that just as the new Syria is built through constitutions and institutions, it is also built through its memory preserved in the consciousness and lenses of its people. Preserving this audiovisual heritage is a preservation of dignity before it is a preservation of materiality, and a confirmation that memory is not an open wound, but rather a promise never to be repeated.
Glory to the honest memory, to the image that resisted silence, and to Syria that learns from its past how to build its future.
