When hope is lost dignity is lost...
Black Basalt Foundation Highlights IRF Roundtable – U.S. Senate Participation
In September 2025, the Black Basalt Foundation took part in the International Religious Freedom (IRF) Roundtable at the U.S. Senate in Washington, D.C.
This was not a symbolic presence. It was a direct transmission of reality, as it is.
Representing the Foundation, Chairman and President Samer Khwaiss addressed government officials, international dignitaries, and participating organizations, speaking to the events of July 2025 in Swaida, not as an isolated incident, but as a stark test of what protection means, and what it takes to remain human when everything is pushed toward collapse.
The remarks did not focus on safety alone.They spoke to dignity under threat, identity under pressure, and memory at risk of erasure.
In his intervention, he raised a question that allows no ambiguity: How is it that individuals designated as terrorists, wanted for violence, are given platforms and voices, while continuing to carry out killing, terror, and massacres?
It was not a political statement. It was a confrontation with a contradiction that cannot be ignored.
He then stated the equation without softening it: Silence is complicity.
And when the voice of reason and humanity recedes, the sounds that rise are those of gunfire, killing, hatred, and revenge.
As Samer Khwaiss stated:
“My people are losing hope... And when hope is lost, dignity is lost. Faith in humanity begins to disappear.
We cannot allow that to happen. We must act now, before hope, and faith, are gone.”
This is not rhetoric. It is a pattern that repeats when left unchallenged.
This participation formed part of an ongoing international dialogue on the protection of minorities in Syria, a dialogue that cannot be delayed, and cannot afford to be diluted.
The Foundation also acknowledges the continued efforts of Nadine Maenza, whose later address at the IRF Summit once again brought attention to Syria and Swaida, reinforcing that what is happening is not peripheral, it is a real test of the values the world claims to uphold.
For the Black Basalt Foundation, participation in such forums is not about visibility.
It is about responsibility.
We carry what happened, as it is.
Into the rooms where decisions are shaped, so that suffering is not reduced to numbers, and stories are not buried beneath neutral language.
We are not here to echo. We are here to ensure the voice remains.
Comments