The war in Syria – now in its 9th year – has flooded timelines and news headlines more times than anyone can count, and often it’s figures and numbers showing how many militia attacks happened each day or how many bombs were dropped on Aleppo. 

Syrians, though, are flipping that narrative with personal, first-hand accounts shared through Twitter via the now viral hashtag #ICanNeverForget (or in Arabic, Ma Birooh men Baly).

The hashtags, which started circulating two days ago, come accompanied with accounts of traumatic experiences of violence that they’ve faced – and continue to face – during the war.

 

One user — Rama Al Zayat – wrote: “A young woman studying medicine was attending her anatomy class at university. The body they were dissecting that day belonged to her brother who was detained by the Assad regime” [translated by Fatima Said]. 

Another user wrote, “#ICanNeverForget the video Assadi Shabeeha (thugs) took while beating and kicking my uncle after they mutilated his body with bullets.”

Others have circulated photos and scenes from the war that were so brutal they were never able to forget, like the lifeless bodies of Syrian children, or the make-shift cemeteries, using papers instead of gravestones, made for people who died and were never identified or found by their families.

Reminiscent perhaps of the power of storytelling that carried the #MeToo movement to its fruition, this hashtag is a loud and powerful outcry from Syrians across the globe whose suffering remains unimaginable to many. Scroll below to read some of the accounts.