Escape from the Cult of Assad 59 When we were born, we grew up very much in this opposition atmosphere. I had an uncle who was tortured to death in Tadmor Prison. My father, he was also tortured in the ’80s. He refused to go out and protest for [the regime], so they took him and they broke his nose, broke his back. They put him in a wheel and they pushed him down a very steep staircase. Usually people die, but he survived to tell the tale. So when he came here, he was very, very active. Another anti-regime organization, the Western Kurdistan Association, was founded by Dr. Jawad Mella. Dr. Mella was a Peshmerga fighter in Syria and exiled to London in 1984. He established the association to serve as a government-in-exile for Syrian Kurds and to lobby the British government to support the secession of a Kurdish-dominated region of his homeland, dubbed Western Kurdistan. Dr. Mella also attested to assisting Kurdish Syrian refugees in Britain through charitable works, bringing members of the community together to form a Kurdish football team, and housing a small Kurdish library, museum, and archive in the London neighborhood of Hammersmith that had recently closed at the time of our interview. Dr. Mella also maintained ties to the broader transnational Kurdish movement by representing Kurdish Syrians in the Kurdish National Congress and by displaying the Kurdish national flag at the Western Kurdistan Association’s headquarters. Dr. Mella and his activist colleagues also held periodic protests outside the London embassy and took every opportunity to speak to the media about the need for independence from the Syrian Arab Republic. Political activism increased ever so slightly in the 2000s at home and abroad during a brief and tenuous opening in autocratic rule. Hafez died in 2000 and his youngest son, Bashar, was recalled from his medical practice in London to take the throne. Despite coming to power through a sham election and hastily rewritten constitutional rules, the transition was an initial cause for hope. Bashar had been relatively distant from regime politics for some time, and as an ophthalmologist, he and his glamorous wife, Asma, appeared young and cosmopolitan. Bashar was credited with bringing the Internet to Syria, and pro-democracy activists took advantage of the thaw in illiberalism to push for reforms. Prominent intellectuals and reform-minded Baʻath Party members led the charge, organizing informal meetings to discuss their demands. In a “Statement of the 99,” they called for an end to the permanent state of martial law, the release of all political prisoners, the safe return of political exiles, and the right to form civic associations and political parties. In 2001, a bolder “Statement of the 1,000” called for expanded rights and constitutional reforms. Kurdish leaders, who had long been stripped of their citizenship in Syria, mobilized to press for rights and recognition. Outsiders declared that a Damascus Spring was underway. But while Bashar initially closed the regime’s notorious Mezzeh prison, released some political prisoners, and allowed some civil society groups to come above ground, these openings slammed shut in 2001 after the regime arrested many organizers and increased internet censorship. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009272148 Published online by Cambridge University Press