(Zaman Al Wasl)- The Syrian lecturer and former detainee Omar Al-Shogre has received the Leadership Award from the King of Sweden Carl XVI Gustav for having leadership skills and noble attributes like sympathy and courage and the willingness to build a better future for humans.
The award will be delivered in September.
Being chosen for the award came as a support for his work in seeking to release political detainees and to instill justice in Syria, as well as for his endeavors in building a country that respects human freedom. He expressed clearly that the award is not a personal honor as much as it is a tribute to all detainees, and to everyone who suffered because of the Assad regime.
Al-Shogre believes that his leadership was built in Syrian prisons when he was surrounded with educated detainees who were knowledgeable in all fields, and those detainees were aiming to build a leader, and today he is one according to the Sweden king, in a country that respects man and man’s endeavors.
He says: "I managed to overcome fear and shock, and turned this into positive energy and gratitude. My conviction is that nothing is impossible, and I hope that my position and my views will inspire others to overcome obstacles and difficulties."
Al-Shogre claims that the award represents a diploma from the king, not just a medal or a material reward, and that he will use it either to support the detainees issue or to treat his mother's teeth that were carpeted by the years of war, as he put it.
When he arrived in Sweden four years ago, he learned the language rapidly in order to merge and break the cultural barriers.
Later, he began giving lectures in theaters, schools, and universities, which gave him oratory and speech skills, and soon enough he was able to give motivational lectures to companies in Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark.
At the beginning of 2019, the young man was invited to give lectures at the American Brown University, which opened a new door for him to give lectures at various universities in America, and after that he started working with the Syrian Emergency Task Force and worked with a group called Officer Caesar, who leaked 55 thousand pictures of victims of torture in the Assad detention camps. The aim of these activities - he says - was to seek, with the help of human rights organizations, to release Syrian political prisoners and liberate Syrian prisons by taking down the Syrian regime and holding criminals accountable in international courts.
Al-Shogre is originally from the village of Al-Bayda in the coastal Tartus province, which was associated with the famous scene of indignity and destruction taking place at the beginning of the revolution. The Assad forces committed another massacre before that, to which Al-Shughri’s father and brothers fell victim.
Al-Shogre was arrested for the first time on April 12, 2011 during the first Al-Bayda massacre for his participation in peaceful demonstrations.
On November 16, 2012, he was arrested again and remained in prison for three years this time. When he was released, he had Tuberculosis and an exhausted body as a result of torture and inhuman conditions that he suffered in detention, forcing his mother to send him to Europe, by sea like the rest of the refugees, in order to get treatment and security.
By Faris al-Rifai
Zaman Al Wasl
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