How Syria's video activists use camera phones to fight the revolution-video

Ahmad Mohammad is a Syrian video activist. He uploads smartphone footage of demonstrations, gun battles and casualties to the internet in an attempt to chronicle the crimes of Bashar al-Assad regime and show the world what is happening in Syria. YouTube and Facebook are banned in Syria, but Mohammad uses proxies to gain access to them

In April last year Ahmad Mohammad left his village in northern Syria filled with its pomegranate trees, figs, and goats, and moved to Lebanon. He came back five months later with a certificate in mobile phone maintenance – a weapon more powerful than Bashar al-Assad's helicopters and tanks. While he was away Mohammad learned how to upload video to YouTube – a website banned by the Syrian regime. "Nobody in Syria knew how to do this," he said. In the meantime Syria's revolution snowballed from a handful of protests into a seething nation-wide revolt, characterised by nightly anti-regime gatherings, shootouts with the security forces and a growing number of casualties.