Ali Mustafa

After his death, his friend Donya Ziaee said, "He didn’t just do journalism or photojournalism as a matter of curiosity or vocation. Every location he chose to cover was for him part of his political activism. It was a show of solidarity with the people whose struggles he was covering."

The Ali Mustafa Memorial Collective hosted an exhibit of Mustafa's photographic work from Syria in 2016 and said, "Mustafa’s reporting expanded far beyond stories of death, displacement and destruction. Instead, his intimate portraits of Syrians living and resisting in the face of devastation were guided by a commitment to show, above of all, people’s strength, survival and resilience against all odds. More than a mere vocation, photojournalism represented for Mustafa a tool for realizing his radical vision of social justice. Through his principled people’s journalism, he worked to sow the seeds for what he called ‘genuine people-to-people solidarity."

Since its civil war began, Syria has become one of the world's most dangerous places for journalists. Dozens of journalists have been killed. Syria is the country with the second highest number of journalists killed since 1992. Ali's death has been added to a long list of journalists killed in the field. In his work as a freelance photojournalist and activist, he struggled alongside the oppressed subjects of his work, regardless of the cost to himself. Journalists before Mustafa and after will continue to travel and put themselves in dangerous positions in order to "cover the gaps that are missing in mainstream media."

Ali Mustafa (July 18, 1984 – March 9, 2014), was a freelance photographer, multi-media journalist and writer based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He was killed along with seven others on March 9, 2014 in Aleppo, Syria in an aerial bombing carried out by the Assad government.

Ali Mustafa was born in Toronto, Canada on July 18, 1984. He attended York University and obtained a Bachelor's degree in Political Science.