Over the course of the conflict, more than half a million people have been killed and 5.6 million have taken refuge outside the country.20 Early on, relentless repression forced many of the civic figures behind the uprising to flee. Systematic imprisonment, torture, military campaigns, and the rise of armed extremist groups have further decimated Syria’s civil society.21 However, numerous non-governmental organizations, associations, and media platforms have emerged outside Syria—particularly in Western European countries, and Istanbul and Gaziantep (hubs of Syrian emigration in Turkey). In addition to creating aid programs for refugees and support for civic initiatives in the liberated areas inside Syria, core areas of diaspora activism include documenting human rights violations and advocating for transitional justice.22 In Egypt, the democratic experiment that started in 2011 with the toppling of long-term dictator Hosni Mubarak was aborted by a military coup. After taking power in 2013, the current president Abdel Fatah Al-Sisi swiftly re-established authoritarian rule. Showing no tolerance for any form of political dissent, Sisi’s government has engaged in wide-spread and systematic human rights violations.23 New legislation severely curtailed space for media and nongovernmental organizations and, in 2019, a constitutional amendment granted the president broad powers undermining the independence of the judiciary.24 Suffocating conditions pushed people of diverse orientations and backgrounds out of the country. Supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood, liberal intellectuals, and young secular activists all left in a wave of political emigration unprecedented in recent Egyptian history. Despite an often traumatizing experience of state repression and exile, recent diaspora members have continued their engagement in political activism, human rights advocacy, and media reporting.25 In all three countries, the forced exit of dissidents and activists appeared to be a deliberate strategy of state authorities. An Egyptian human rights defender who was interviewed for this report noted that the government was pleased to see activists leave as a consequence of the intimidating atmosphere: “They know that these people will be vocal abroad but at least they got rid of them inside the country.”26 In Syria, explained another respondent, some activists were warned before their immediate arrest so as to have a chance to leave the country. Others who were released until trial after a temporary arrest without clear charges seized the opportunity to flee.27 Threatened by arbitrary arrest, torture and Kafkaesque judicial procedures, many Iranian activists were also forced into exile.28 Pushing critical voices out of the territory, however, did not mean that the regimes let go of them entirely. To the contrary, all three governments devised new policies to monitor and control their diaspora and exiled communities. 20 Fischer, M. (2016, August 26). Syria’s Paradox: Why the War Only Ever Seems to Get Worse. The New York Times. https://www. nytimes.com/2016/08/27/world/middleeast/syria-civil-war-why-get-worse.html. 21 Barnard, A. (2019, May 11). Inside Syria’s Secret Torture Prisons: How Bashar Al-Assad Crushed Dissent. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/11/world/middleeast/syria-torture-prisons.html; Human Rights Watch (2012). Torture Archipelago: Arbitrary Arrests, Torture, and Enforced Disappearances in Syria’s Underground Prisons since 2011. https://www. hrw.org/report/2012/07/03/torture-archipelago/arbitrary-arrests-torture-and-enforced-disappearances-syrias. 22 Andén-Papadopoulos, K., & Pantti, M. (2013). The media work of Syrian diaspora activists: Brokering between the protest and mainstream media. International Journal of Communication, 7, 22; Stokke, E., & Wiebelhaus-Brahm, E. (2019). Syrian diaspora mobilization: Vertical coordination, patronage relations, and the challenges of fragmentation in the pursuit of transitional justice. Ethnic and Racial Studies 42, 1-20. 23 Amnesty International (2019). Egypt: Gross Human Rights Violations Under President Al-Sisi. https://www.amnesty.org/down- load/Documents/MDE1202532019ENGLISH.pdf. 24 Human Rights Watch (2019, April 2). Egypt: Constitutional Amendments Entrench Repression. https://www.hrw.org/ news/2019/04/20/egypt-constitutional-amendments-entrench-repression. 25 Dunne, M., & Hamzawy, A. (2019). Egypt’s Political Exiles: Going Anywhere but Home. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington. https://carnegieendowment.org/files/Dunne_Hamzawy_EgyptExiles_final.pdf; Matthies-Boon, V. (2017). Shattered worlds: Political trauma amongst young activists in post-revolutionary Egypt. The Journal of North African Studies, 22(4), 620-644. 26 Interview E2, November 2018. 27 Interview S5, October 2018. 28 Gholamhosseinpour, M. (2019, February 18). Civil Rights Activists Systematically Forced to Emigrate. Iran Wire. https://iranwire. com/en/features/5861. 11