In June 2011, a singer called Ibrahim Qualoush performed a song at an anti-regime demonstration in Hama. The song was built around a simple lyric that the vast crowd chanted back at Ibrahim: ‘Come on Bashar [Assad], leave!’ A few days later, Ibrahim’s body was pulled out of the Orontes River. His vocal chords had been cut out.
By killing those who gave voice to the revolution, the Assad regime was trying to re-establish a silence that it had imposed on the country when it took power more than 40 years earlier. But Ibrahim Qualoush was not the only one singing.
