Muhammad, 27, fled his home in the port city of Latakia last March, and deserted his job as cameraman for the Syrian state television network.

He now opts to use his acquired skills for media activism.

Similarly, Osama, 22, is a soldier for the state army who refuses to shoot at his fellow Syrians in protests.

He now arms himself with a brand-new-video-equipped smartphone, instead of a gun.

These two cases exemplify a recent transformation from Syria’s previous state media and soldiers, to activists who are “bearing witness,” to the atrocities being committed by the Syrian government.

The Syrian government uses their state television network as a medium to propagate images of citizens attacking soldiers during protests, when the opposite is reality; and airs images of peaceful demonstrators at pro-Assad rallies, instead of showcasing dissidents.

Civil society wants to achieve social change by recording what their eyes and ears see and hear.

Muhammad is rectifying his work on the state channel, arguing that the station “threatens people’s lives,” by refusing to film the violence against protesters, or blaming them for soldiers deaths.

He is making amends through his work exposing the true stories of Syria’s pro-democracy uprising, with a great combination of technical skill and secrecy.

The true stories of Syria’s revolution are unreported, he says, because the intelligence community, called the Mukhabarat, control everything projected outwards. “The world does not know what is happening here,” he says, “The Mukhabarat are killing people without any media attention.”

“Syrian media lies, lies, lies,” Muhammad states. “I had to leave my job to protect the Syrian people, here in the valley and everywhere else.”

Muhammad is part of a group of cyberactivists who clamor to obtain footage of military forces as they roll into towns. There are also Syrians within the military itself engaging in the cyberactivist movement, despite personal costs.

Military service is compulsory in Syria, unless they are the only male child or pay a heavy wage, and lasts almost two years. In 2010, army regulars were estimated at 220,000 troops, with an additional 300,000 in reserve.

22-year-old Osama is a Syrian soldier who obtains footage while serving since he bought a brand-new video-equipped smartphone in the Syrian tech capital of Bahtha.

“They told me that Israel had occupied Daraa, and some people there were siding with Zionism against our president, so we had to go and liberate the city,” he says. But “there was no Israeli occupation there. We were actually occupying the city, there was nobody else”.

According to an article in Wired.com, Osama frequently takes days off to visit a friend’s house with a satellite link. The individual coordinates these teams of so-called video soldiers, taking their full flash cards and gives them back empty ones. He has recently been uploading and distributing the mobile camera footage on Youtube and Facebook.

One clip, posted online in the beginning of June and shared on a Syrian activist Facebook page, was supposedly produced by one of the shabiha, the militia loyal to President Bashar al-Assad.

This featured activist’s video shows heroic music over images of heavily armed men in uniforms smiling and laughing as they chat near the bloody corpses of two men in civilian clothes.

“I decided to start filming and documenting the truth when I realized the amount of lies we are forced to believe at the army,” says Rami, who is another Syrian soldier interviewed by Wired.com.

“This will be my weapon,” Osama asserts, and wonders: “Maybe one day, when this is over, I will throw my gun away and become a video reporter. Inshallah.”

While the outside world has been watching video clips of barbarism, Syria’s state-controlled media has repeatedly published and broadcasted violent images that the government maintains stems from protesters. It seems, however, both state media and shabiha are taking initiatives to show the reality of the situation, one video at a time.

 

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