Bosla Arts
In Conversation: Rafif Jouejati

The following interview is from an Instagram Live conversation that took place on 19 November 2021. Rafif Jouejati co-founded the Museum of #Activism in an effort to link activist movements around the globe. She is the President of the Board of Directors of Baytna and a Non-Resident Scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington, DC. Jouejati is a published author of analytical pieces and op-eds on Syria, including a chapter in the book The Syria Dilemma, and a frequent media commentator and public speaker.

Georgia Beeston (GB): Thank you for joining us today on your Friday and hello everyone else, thank you also for joining us. Rafif it's great to have you here it's the 1st in a new series that we are doing with Bosla Arts where we want to interview people like you who have started initiatives; activists, artists who are bridging the arts, human rights, and activism. And, like the Museum of #Activism, Bosla Arts is very new as well. We really want to create a platform where we can support artists worldwide who are facing difficulties, facing risk but also to share their stories and use art to bridge different people from around the world basically. So, thank you for joining us and let's start with you introducing yourself a bit?

Rafif Jouejati (RJ): Thank you, I'm honoured to be your guest today. My name is Rafif Jouejati I'm Syrian-American and I've been an activist for a great many years on different issues Arab-focused but also women-focused in the US for small business and women in technology. But I founded the Museum of #Activism because we felt that there was not enough linkage among movements around the world and we wanted to show that they all shares a common humanity and that was how the idea was born. We held our first live exhibit in Berlin in October that focused on Syria so we showed some artwork as well as artefacts from the days of the uprising in Syria and going forward we'll be focusing on a great many topics because we think it's a global movement and we are pairing up, much like you're doing, with activism, because activism is an artform at the end of the day.

GB: Yes and I really want to deep dive into the Museum of #Activism slightly later on but I thought to start maybe we could hear about your own career before that because you

have done so many incredible things including founding the Foundation to Restore Equality and Education in Syria (FREE Syria). I was wondering if you could tell us a bit about that and why you founded it and the context that you founded it in?

RJ: Yes, I co-Founded FREE Syria because we felt that the uprising which was largely coordinated and led by women. We felt that the uprising was beginning to marginalise women and as more and more men emerged on a leadership level they were pushing women aside and we felt that for women to achieve equality they needed to have a base education we felt that everyone needed to understand what feminism was, what the role of women in activism was and so that's why we founded that organisation. So, using that organisation we did things like survey more than 50,000 Syrians and develop the “Syria Freedom Charter”. We also opened women's clinics, we tried to open an education centre to help women deal with the trauma of war and also take on leadership roles and leadership activities. So, those are some of the initiatives that FREE Syria has undertaken in the past.

GB: Incredible, and I was reading about the “Syria Freedom Charter” that you did and it sounds so, I'd never head anything like it maybe you can tell us about what happened there because you interviewed thousands of people.

RJ: So, it was challenging because public surveys in Syria are not real - statistics are at the whim of the government, of the regime. What we wanted to do was to see if truly Syrians wanted dignity, democracy, and equality as they were claimed. We also heard a lot about what they didn't want but we were not as Syrians articulating a vision for the future state. And so, with about a 100 activists and local coordination committees in Syria we formulated a survey of about 18 questions open-ended and closed questions and went around to every governate of Syria, 14 governates and then we interviewed Syrian refugees in Lebanon. We collected the answers we did the data analysis and released the “Freedom Charter”. Now, when we were working on the “Freedom Charter” it was sort of the arrival of ISIS the slow and gradual Islamization of the revolution, some parts of the revolution and we had committed to publishing the results no matter what and fortunately I am so proud of my fellow Syrians to say that the overwhelming majority of respondents wanted a democracy with equality and justice for all regardless of ethnicity or religious background.

GB: That's incredible. When you look back on it how do you reflect on it from that moment?

RJ: I think that while Syrian's have obviously not succeeded in their revolution yet I believe that this is an essential part of our living memory of the uprising and sacrificing people made. I think it's an inspiration maybe not for Syrian's but for others. For example Myanmar is looking at our “Freedom Charter” and tailoring it to their own context. So, this is a document that has more power than just its Syrian context. So, I'm optimistic that we can resume operations one day and I hope the struggle continues.

GB: And I read somewhere that it was inspired by the “South African Freedom Charter”?

RJ: Absolutely, part of my role in the early days of the uprising I was with the local coordination committees, for those who don't know, that was really the largest network of secular activists in Syria and that group was responsible for much of the brilliant, and innovative, and creative protests around the country. We also documented the losses and violations of human rights but so, what part of my role was to organise trainings for non-violent activists and one of our trainers happened to be someone who had worked with the ANC and had lent a hand in the “South African Freedom Charters” so, again there's this connection that links completely different cultures and political contexts to come up with a similar results. So, again we prove that we have common humanity and that if we work together we have sustainable activist products or deliverables.

GB: I was wondering how creating that led to you founding later on the Museum of #Activism?

RJ: If I understand correctly it separate or disparate activities end up getting linked. We are always trying to find exceptions and what the focus in the last 10 years has been on Syria, that has type of activism, my interaction with people from other counties has really solidified and validated for me the idea that we are all linked somehow. And through activism of the arts those are interchangeable we have so much in common and we [distorted audio] and we have disparate views for sure but that's what makes it interesting. That's the way to grow the community and invite other people to care. One of the things we all suffer from no matter what our class is, is that there are too many apathetic people and so we are hoping part of our mission is to invite those to care about something and see that while it might not be happening in their backyard, it could. And so, that's part of our mission if you will.

GB: That's really interesting because I completely see where you are coming from with that. With Bosla Arts one of the 1st things that we are doing is launching a publication which is going to feature artists from around the world who are coming from very different contexts but also facing risk, facing persecution at times and challenging oppressive forces and one side of that is to share their stories but also it's to try and confront the opinions that we are witnessing changing especially in the UK context where we are based where all we get is what is said by the government and we have a particularly brutal government when it comes to migration policies and also the faced-paced news cycles we get where we are flooded with images and visuals and stories of terrible things happening across the world and then the next day there's a different story and a complete disjunction to what's going on so I feel we have a lot of similarities in that as how art can convey as a method of reaching people in way's that a news article or media cannot. And so, what's the role of storytelling in the context of the Museum of #Activism?

RJ: That's a great question what you and artists around the world are doing is giving some purpose to that news angle which as you said is very, very fast and so while your cause is for different topics but what we are all trying to do is give ourselves some permanence and some relevance and then we are committing to paper or canvas or image in any form and we are creating our history so we can go back and review it and it might not be on today's front page or on top of a website, we are creating or writing history and I think it's so important to document all of it because struggles continue through generations and I can speak for Syria where young students are now carrying the torch, the baton after their parents because the struggle for justice is universal and it's constant.

GB: Yes. You mention this link between different movements and on your website you show a few that you'll be exploring in the future that includes Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street but also Hong Kong and Native Americans and more. I was wondering from your experience and from the preparations you're doing what you notice to be the common denominators between these very different activist and protest movements?

RJ: It's always, I find it always is justice so whether it's Black Lives Matter or its Hong Kong, or Belarus or an environmental cause we're pursuing justice where it has always been we all as humans want to live healthy, productive lives and for these different activist causes we [distorted audio]. And so, it's up to us to fight for it and that links us. And so, in the USA the justice system does not necessarily apply to people of colour and well I can link this to Syria. Not just because activists [in Syria] painted a mural of George Floyd with the words "I can't breathe", the linkage is that both are seeking a justice that applies to everybody equally regardless of what you look like or what you think. So, that's one link it's usually the same for any movement, for environmental issues we want the right to live, we want the right to live in the world and that means justice for all. The environment really doesn't discriminate right so we haven't explored the activism in it yet.

GB: Yeah. It's interesting that you mention the painting of the mural of George Floyd because there is definitely this correlation - a previous interview we did with Bosla Arts was with our advisor, Ganzeer, who is an incredible artist but was also a famous street artist during the Egyptian Revolution and he described how art was his tool of protest, he didn't consider other tools because that was the way he knew how to express himself. I was wondering through your experience and your career what you think the role of art is in activism?

RJ: Oh I think, I mean again I'll go back and say that an artist is an artform on its own. We see so many films and documentaries we see photography and musicians, we see people who are able to smuggle out [audio distorted], we see writing, we see all forms of art so I think we are redefining "art". I think the great masters of art today are those people who can articulate the quest for something and who can express that of the community who is pissed off and willing to take non-violent action to bring about positive change and hats off to all artists because the diversity in expression is what makes the picture complete.

GB: Yes, absolutely. On that note, there is also the other side of activism which is the risk that's involved. We've been taking part this week with the Day of the Imprisoned Writers with PEN International. I was wondering what you think are the greatest risks to activists and it's a hard question but from your career and what you've seen what are some of the biggest risks that activists face today?

RJ: Well, I guess it depends on where they are located and what they are dealing with in the case of Syria, we have a regime that is able to successfully use chemical weapons against civilians with virtually no repercussions so in Syria activism is to be an activist is [distorted audio] to deliver humanitarian aid in Syria at one time was an act of treason. Let alone writing a Freedom Charter or speaking out but for the folks in Idlib who wrote the banners every day and told the world what was happening [distorted audio] but think about in Syria to run a hospital is life-endangering, to go to the market could cost you your life because the regime has no boundaries. In other countries, you know to protest with Black Lives Matter in a large US city might cause you unlawful arrest or detention, it might cause you to be labelled a terrorist even though you are simply protesting your rights. So I think the dangers range from loss of life or torture to things like detention but I think it's always [distorted] on something and we all have be prepared to put in what we can because we are thinking of the change we want to reflect.

GB: Absolutely, and do you have any words of advice if someone was considering putting themselves in a difficult or perhaps dangerous situation in order to be an activist or protest?

RJ: Absolutely, I would highly recommend a book by Michael Beer from Non-Violence International and it's "Civil Resistance Tactics in the 21st Century”. This is an expansion of Gene Sharp's work and gives contextual forms of protest [distorted audio] but again, if you are an artist and you are expressing your anger about a situation put that out there for the world to see as that's a form of activism, if you want to get involved [distorted audio] maybe we can start writing for your publication and have discussions on what links us but I encourage everybody to become an activist for causes that matter to you.

GB: Definitely, I should also say in case people need it that there in our highlights there is a resource that was put together by Artists at Risk Connection that's a safety guide for artists at risk it's an action plan for artists who could be at-risk.

RJ: I'm going to have to get that.

GB: Yes, I'll send it to you, it's great and free as well.