At the inauguration of the exhibition « Detainees and Disappeared, » Sunday, May 18, 2025, at the National Museum of Damascus. (Credit: Gabriel Blondel/L'Orient-Le Jour)
“The dead are only truly gone when the living forget them,” said Sana Yazigi at the May 18 opening of the Detainees and the Disappeared exhibition at the National Museum of Damascus. Yazigi is the director of Creative Memory of the Syrian Revolution, the 12-year-old organization of archivists behind the exhibit.The majestic stone-carved building of the museum opened one month after Bashar al-Assad’s regime fell on Dec. 8. “This exhibition is a victory for the living, and the beginning of justice for the thousands of disappeared,” Yazigi said during a speech given in the museum’s gardens. “Syria can now show their faces, after all the oppression and lies of the fallen regime.” An estimated 136,000 people went missing between March 2011 and August 2024, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights. At the close of her address, Yazigi...
“The dead are only truly gone when the living forget them,” said Sana Yazigi at the May 18 opening of the Detainees and the Disappeared exhibition at the National Museum of Damascus. Yazigi is the director of Creative Memory of the Syrian Revolution, the 12-year-old organization of archivists behind the exhibit.The majestic stone-carved building of the museum opened one month after Bashar al-Assad’s regime fell on Dec. 8. “This exhibition is a victory for the living, and the beginning of justice for the thousands of disappeared,” Yazigi said during a speech given in the museum’s gardens. “Syria can now show their faces, after all the oppression and lies of the fallen regime.” An estimated 136,000 people went missing between March 2011 and August 2024, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights. At the close of her...
