Death By Any Means
"Save us from death. Save us from the hell of Assad's killing machine. For nearly one year, the city of Moadamiyeh has been under siege with no access to food, electricity, medicine, communications, and fuel."These statements sent out to the international humanitarian aid organizations and the Syrian National Coalition representing the main rebel umbrella group, appears an understatement of the desperation of residents of the rebel-held suburb of Damascus. Their plea to the international community to save them from starvation and ongoing bombardments represents yet another urgency bedevilling the capacity of those they address to respond to.
Written plea by Moadamiyeh residents
"We are heading toward a definite destiny: starvation. Please, we are begging you [international organizations] to enter and distribute food. Residents are living on boiled grape leaves and olives."
Qusai Zakarya, Moadamiyeh council
The Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad has no intention of permitting aid in the form of medicine, food or anything else that might sustain life, into the territory. It plans to starve out the rebels ensconced in the area. And if the thousands of unfortunate residents remaining there are harmed by the situation, well that's their fault for being Sunni and not Shia, and for supporting the rebels' presence in their enclave.
The humanitarian situation has been in a state of severe deterioration for months. Troops loyal to President al-Assad have blocked food and other supplies from entering, and though some three thousand residents were able to flee late last month during a rare and temporary ceasefire, the remaining 12,000 civilians are in dire straits. For months Syrian troops have surrounded the battered suburb.
The Moadamiyeh Media Centre reported the death by starvation of six people in September. Two women and four children. An imam issued a fatwa earlier in the month giving permission to eat cats and dogs to ward off starvation. Salah Al0-Khatib said he had no choice other than to lift the restrictions under Islamic law. "Not because it is religiously permitted, but because it is a reflection of the reality we are suffering."
Plans had been afoot to attempt the evacuation of additional civilians over the three thousand the Syrian Red Cross and Red Crescent had previously been able to usher out of the war zone during a ceasefire. But it failed once clashes forced hundreds of women and children gathered at a checkpoint at the edge of the suburb to flee for their lives, back to where they had come from, in the midst of the conflict.
The Syrian National Coalition has asked international organizations to establish a corridor allowing food into the area. Valerie Amos, the humanitarian chief of the United Nations has called for an "immediate pause" in the conflict for the purpose of allowing civilians to leave the area, but to no avail. Aid agencies advise that Syrians right across the country are experiencing difficulties obtaining food.
Hunger and deprivation is particularly acute in the rebel-held suburbs of the capital, Damascus. Wisaam al-Ahmad, a Moadamiyeh activist, deplores the double standards by the international community whereby rage over the use of chemical weapons resulted in UN chemical weapons inspectors moving freely throughout the area, while similar pressure to force the regime to feed blockaded civilians has been overlooked.
Death by chemical weapons attack; death by deliberate starvation through blockade; what's the difference? The former is swifter, the latter more agonizingly drawn out.
Labels: Atrocities, Conflict, Human Relations, Human Rights, Revolution, Syria
posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, October 23, 2013
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