Reports | 25 05 2020
Kish Malek [Checkmate] organization launched a campaign directed to Western audiences entitled "Same Shit," which aims to reiterate how both the Syrian regime and ISIS are merely "two sides of the same coin."
Ziad Hammoud, campaign director, tells Rozana how "the idea for the #SameShit hashtag came to remind of the Assad regime crimes, and to stress the need to place it squarely in truck with other terrorist organizations."
The campaign was launched in a number of European cities as well as on English language social media pages. It included campaign products such as art and musical works as well as cartoons, featuring male and female Syrian artists, intellectuals, writers, and translators.
According to Hammoud, the campaign has met with both positive and negative reactions—mainly because of its name. Some have labelled it as being tactless and impolite; yet he stresses that "so too is the situation through which we as Syrians are living now. The aim is not an assualt on common decency, as some thought; rather delivering the message to the target group."
The campaign also includes a number of products sold by the organizers, to collect money to buy books for one of the cultural centers in Syria. It also seeks to attract Western media and public opinion, and help overcome the shortcomings of the Syrian opposition in marketing issues related to the revolution—a particular challenge for those in charge of this campaign, says Hammoud.