The fall of the Assad regime created a rare civic opening Syria had not seen in decades. Syrians have crossed an invisible line and begun asking powerful figures uncomfortable questions, by name and in public, without the fear that had long governed public life. A man could stand in front of a camera and ask the president, ministers and public figures to honour the financial pledges they had made in fundraising campaigns. Residents could protest a governor’s decision to revive an Assad-era reconstruction project.
That opening is now being tested. Not by tanks in the streets or the return of mass arrests, but through something quieter and more familiar: defamation cases that turn activism into a legal liability. For a country trying to prove that it has broken with decades of authoritarian rule, the question is no longer simply whether people can speak. It is whether the law will protect them when they do.
The first warning came earlier this month, when Damascus Governorate brought a defamation case against two community mobilisers. Yaser Abbas, spokesperson for the association campaigning to repeal Decree 66, and engineer Ibrahim Sheikh al-Shabab, a representative of affected residents in Mezzeh, were detained after protesting the governorate’s decision to resume reconstruction in Marota City.
Issued by Bashar al-Assad in 2012, Decree 66 paved the way for Marota City and Basilia City, projects widely seen by affected residents not as urban renewal, but as vehicles for dispossession. The charges reportedly included defamation against the Damascus Governorate and its governor, insulting public authorities, spreading false information online, and inciting protest. Abbas and Sheikh al-Shabab were released on bail a few days later after mediation by local notables with the governorate. But the case still sent a clear message: even peaceful mobilisation can be turned into a potential criminal matter.
