Syria reporters start Spain’s 1st refugee-led mag

ÁLVARO VILLALOBOS

Before arriving in Madrid, Muhammed, Ayham, Okba and Moussa honed their skills as journalists during Syria’s bloody civil war and now they have opened Spain’s first refugee-led digital magazine.

Launched on April 7, Baynana is an innovative online ‘magazine’ whose Arabic name means “Between us”.

All four are originally from the southern Syrian city of Deraa, birthplace of the 2011 revolt against President Bashar al Assad that sparked the war.

In early 2019, they fled to Turkey, then in May that year, they flew to Madrid with the help of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), the New York-based press freedom watchdog.

“When the war started I was 12, but I knew very well what was going on because many people were out protesting — near my home, in the mosque,” says Okba Mohamed, the youngest of the four who is now 22.

Just four years later, he began working for local news outlets, “recording protests, bombings”.

Muhammed Subat, 31, said he initially studied psychology in Damascus before going on to work for an Istanbul-based opposition channel called Syria TV, first in Syria, then in Turkey.

Spain was a place he had always wanted to visit because of the football, but he’d never imagined being there “as a refugee or migrant”.

“I imagined coming here as a traveller or as a student. But that’s life,” he shrugs.

With articles written in Arabic and Spanish, Baynana’s aim is to show “the good face of migrants here in Spain,” says Ayham al Ghareeb, 32, who came to Madrid with his wife and two young daughters.

The fourth member of the team is Moussa al Jamaat, 39, who also worked as a journalist in Syria and built and maintains the Baynana website.

SUCCESS STORIES

So far, the focus has been on successful migrant stories, such as that of Ashraf Kachach, a YouTuber with Moroccan roots who fights Islamophobia, or Malak Zungi, the Lebanese founder of a project to train refugees as chefs in Spain.

Another report profiled Sevilla striker Youssef en-Nesyri, whose success in Spain’s top-flight football league incarnates the dreams of many youths in the Middle East and North Africa.

At the same time, Baynana seeks to provide “useful information” to Spain’s Arabic-speaking community, especially migrants who face many challenges in their daily lives.

— AFP