Syrian Flags

I wasn’t entirely happy with my coverage of the march organised by the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces on the third anniversary of the start of their fight for freedom, mainly because it was hard for me to give the event the attention it deserved with so many other things going on. So rather unusually, the pictures I took came from three separate visits to the march, two while it was gathering and the last when it was approaching its end and during the final rally.

It was fairly clear to me from the start that the flag would dominate my pictures, although I’m not sure how widely the differences between the the ‘Independence flag’ used by the Syrian National Coalition and the flag used by the Asad regime  (red, white and black stripes with two green stars) are recognised by the general public. Certainly some major media outlets have occasionally confused the two. The Independence flag is that adopted when Syria gained limited independence from the French colonial empire in 1932 (Syria continued under French mandate and the French didn’t actually leave and Syria only gained full independence under this same flag in 1946).

Perhaps more surprising was the presence of another flag, the Saltire, or as we used to know it, the Saint Andrew’s Cross. So far as I’m aware this has no particular connection with Syria, but there is a strong Free Syrian community in Scotland in groups including Scotland 4 Syria, Together for Syria and Free Syrians Glasgow, many of whom had come down for the London march. Many of them I think see the independence movement in Scotland as being a similar struggle to that in  Syria, though so far the ‘No’ campaign has stuck to lies, slurs and threats and has not yet resorted to chemical weapons.

Quite a few people on the protest were literally showing their colours on their faces, and I and other photographers rather swarmed around them taking pictures. It perhaps rather misrepresents the event as a whole.

As always there is a tension between recording the photogenic and the much harder task of producing an accurate representation of the event as a whole. Here I perhaps went too much for the photogenic – though perhaps it was just a more visually attractive event than most.

Despite this, I think the spirit and the message of the protest comes through in the set of pictures you can see in Syrians March for International Action.  It was an event that left me feeling a little ashamed at how little we in this country have done for Syria, as well as wondering exactly how we could have done more. I can’t swallow the line of some on the left who support Assad despite his brutal attacks on the Syrian people. But perhaps it’s my own political indecision and lack of effective action that makes me unhappy rather than my pictures.



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