March 11, 2026
In early March 2011, after popular uprisings swept Tunisia and Egypt, a group of boys in the small Syrian farming town of Deraa, 60 miles south of Damascus, painted messages opposing then-President Bashar al-Assad on a school wall.
“Freedom, freedom and freedom, only,” read one phrase. “Down with the corrupt Assad,” read another.
The 2011 FRONTLINE documentary The Regime chronicled what happened next: The boys were rounded up by the government’s secret police and reportedly beaten and tortured — sparking outrage against the Assad regime that would help to fuel the Syrian uprising.
As Syrians took to the streets to protest and to call for more freedoms, the swift and brutal response by Assad’s security forces followed a playbook for crushing dissent that his family had honed over 40 years in power, The Regime reported.