Tag Archives: Syrian civil war

Britain, Government, Syria, United Nations, United States

Prime Minister May seeks investigation into Syria ‘chemical weapons attack’

SYRIA

Idlib

A suspected Syrian government chemical attack killed scores of people, including children, in the northwestern province of Idlib.

Theresa May has called for an investigation into a suspected chemical weapons attack in Syria as she condemned the atrocity which has claimed the lives of dozens of people.

The Prime Minister called on Russia to ensure Bashar Assad’s regime is brought to an end.

Opposition activists claim that dozens of people died in the attack in a town in the northern province of Idlib, with the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights putting the death toll at 58, including 11 children.

Mrs May said: “I’m appalled by the reports that there’s been a chemical weapons attack on a town south of Idlib allegedly by the Syrian regime.

“We condemn the use of chemical weapons in all circumstances.

“If proven, this will be further evidence of the barbarism of the Syrian regime, and the UK has led international efforts to call to account the Syrian regime and Daesh for the use of chemical weapons and I would urge the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to investigate this incident as soon as possible.

“I’m very clear that there can be no future for Assad in a stable Syria which is representative of all the Syrian people and I call on all the third parties involved to ensure that we have a transition away from Assad.

“We cannot allow this suffering to continue.”

Standard
Britain, Government, Politics, Society, Syria, United Nations, United States

The Syrian Civil War enters its seventh year

SYRIA

Syria1

An example of the devastating effects that the Syrian civil war has had. A number of NGOs have reported deteriorating physical and mental health in many children exposed to the futility of war.

Intro: The Syrian conflict, one of the bloodiest in 70-years, has claimed almost 500,000 lives with millions more displaced. The war is about to enter its seventh year with no likelihood of it coming to an end anytime soon. But as several NGO’s have reported, aspects of how children in the region have been affected raises great concern.

THE SYRIAN WAR, a power struggle between President Bashar al-Assad, Sunni rebel groups and other militant factions and splinter groups, gave rise to the extremist Islamic State group (IS), which routinely recruits children to fight and has claimed responsibility for numerous atrocities across the region.

The complex, multi-party, tinderbox conflict has claimed almost 500,000 lives, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, and has displaced millions of people, creating a refugee crisis across Europe and the Middle East.

What started as a series of anti-Assad protests in 2011 has led to an all-out war that has spiralled out of control. The fragmented nature of the conflict and the rise of extremist forces, many of which are closely affiliated to Al-Qaeda, have led to an almost total breakdown of normal civilian life in the country.

While the progression of the conflict has stagnated in recent years into an ebb-and-flow territorial war, the last two months have seen Kurdish and Arab coalition forces – backed by the US-led coalition – besieging territory held by IS in eastern Syria.

Several non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have used the six-year anniversary of the war to give updates on those affected by the conflict.

In a report titled “Hitting Rock Bottom”, UNICEF gave a grave analysis of the deteriorating situation for children.

“Children have paid the heaviest price in the conflict, and in 2016 their suffering hit rock bottom in a drastic escalation of violence,” it said.

“Nearly 6 million children now depend on humanitarian assistance, with almost half forced to flee their homes.”

The report claims that at least 652 children died last year, a 20 per cent increase in the number killed a year earlier. Troubling, UNICEF believes that over 850 children were recruited to fight for various groups in 2016, double the number estimated for 2015.

Another report by OXFAM has taken aim at the growing wave of anti-migrant sentiment around the world.

“Those who have fled Syria are seeing doors slammed in their faces as rich countries across the world enact policies hostile towards refugees,” an Oxfam report has said.

It has also heavily criticised Donald Trump’s blanket ban of migrants from Syria entering the United States, as well as the British government’s cancellation of the so-called Dubs Amendment to give asylum to unaccompanied Syrian child refugees.

Save the Children released a study regarding the mental wellbeing of children in the rapidly worsening conflict. The study claims that one in four children in Syria are at risk of severe mental health disorders.

The organisation interviewed 450 subjects and found signs that many had been traumatised by six years of war, and were “living in an almost constant state of fear” even after escaping from the war zone.

Parents claim their children are showing increasing signs of aggressive and disturbing behaviour, suffering from bedwetting and speech impediments, and in some cases attempting suicide.

At present, almost all major NGOs are claiming that verified instances of murder, maiming and kidnapping are on the increase in Syria.

Although bombing campaigns in eastern Syria may liberate the regions from the threat of Islamic State, an effective and safe resolution to the conflict looks a long way off.

Standard
Britain, Government, Syria, United Nations

Assad’s trail of torture and extermination

SYRIA

Intro: Boris Johnson sickened by Amnesty report that Syrian regime ‘exterminated’ 13,000 captives.

The British Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, has said he was “sickened” by reports that Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria has tortured and hanged 13,000 political prisoners in four years.

Amid compelling evidence that the Syrian president’s henchmen carried out an unprecedented “policy of extermination”, Mr Johnson said the dictator had “no future as leader”.

Civilians perceived to be opposed to the brutal regime – including medical doctors and aid workers – were executed in mass hangings of up to 50 detainees at a time, according to a chilling Amnesty International dossier.

Victims were given death sentences after sham trials lasting less than three minutes, often on the basis of confessions extracted through torture, the human rights charity has said. Many thousands of others held at the notorious 20,000-capacity Saydnaya military prison, north of Damascus, died from starvation and disease.

Amnesty International’s year-long investigation drew on graphic accounts from witnesses, including judges, officials, and former guards at the prison.

One source, a former military officer known only as Hamid, who was arrested in 2011, described hearing the killings taking place from the floor above. He said: ‘If you put your ears on the floor, you could hear the sound of a kind of gurgling … We were sleeping on top of the sound of people choking to death.’

The bodies of those hanged are believed to have been dumped in mass graves on military land on the outskirts of the war-ravaged capital.

The report said it was ‘inconceivable that these large-scale practices have not been authorised at the highest levels of the Syrian government’.

It is the first evidence said to prove that Assad, 51, has authorised torture to punish opponents and crush dissent. He has long been suspected of such action.

Individual death sentences are supposed to be approved by either the Syrian minister of defence or the chief of staff of the army, both of whom are authorised to act on behalf of Assad.

map-torture-prison-syria

Thousands hanged at Saydnaya prison, Amnesty International has said.

Following publication of the study, Mr Johnson took to social media networking site Twitter, and said: ‘Sickened by reports from Amnesty International on executions in Syria. Assad responsible for so many deaths and has no future as leader.’

His comments appear to back away from his suggestions last month that Assad could be allowed to run for re-election in a bid to end Syrian’s civil war, which has left nearly 400,000 dead and half the population displaced.

A statement released by 10 Downing Street said: ‘The Foreign Secretary stressed that Britain [doesn’t] believe that Assad can govern the country or take control of its democratically elected government.’

Amnesty’s report, titled Human Slaughterhouse, reveals that as well as extrajudicial executions, the Syrian authorities are deliberately inflicting horrific conditions on detainees, including torture and denial of food, water and medicine.

Since the uprising began in 2011, the prison has been filled with those accused of opposing Assad or taking part in anti-government protests, as well as military personnel said to be working against the regime or plotting to defect.

Upon arriving at Saydnaya, they undergo a brutal session of beating – referred to as the ‘welcome party’. Witnesses described a methodical routine to the killings, in which the doomed detainees were collected from their cell blocks in the afternoon and told they were being transferred to civilian prisons.

Instead, they were moved to a facility in the grounds known as the ‘red building’, where they were beaten for several hours.

Between midnight and 3am, they were then blindfolded and moved in delivery trucks and minibuses to another part of the jail called the ‘white building’. There, they were taken into a basement room, nooses were placed around their necks and they were hanged. Following the executions, the prisoners’ bodies were taken to Tishreen military hospital where they were registered as having died of natural causes. The corpses were then loaded onto trucks to be secretly buried in mass graves, the report said. Families of the dead were never informed.

Amnesty said the evidence, from between 2011 and 2015, amounted to crimes against humanity and called on the UN to investigate.

A spokesperson for Amnesty said: ‘The horrors depicted in this report reveal a hidden, monstrous campaign, authorised at the highest levels of the Syrian government, aimed at crushing any form of dissent within the Syrian population.

‘The cold-blooded killing of thousands of defenceless prisoners, along with the carefully crafted and systematic programmes of psychological and physical torture that are in place inside Saydnaya prison cannot be allowed to continue. Those responsible for these heinous crimes must be brought to justice.’ The report adds to previous evidence of abuses, which could result in Assad and key figures in his regime being hauled before international criminal courts charged with crimes against humanity.

In August 2013, a defector known only as Caesar fled Syria with files containing photographs of the bodies of more than 28,000 victims who had died under torture in prison.

The state of the bodies – which were covered in horrific wounds – and their sheer number revealed the scale of the abuse.

Amnesty’s report was published ahead of talks in Geneva aiming to end the bloody civil war.

Assad’s representatives are preparing to meet officials from Turkey, who have backed the rebels, later this month. Russia and Iran, both Assad’s allies, will join the talks.

Standard