generalspeaking

Saturday, February 01, 2014

Justice for Dissenting Victims

"Wiping entire neighbourhoods off the map is not a legitimate tactic of war. These unlawful demolitions are the latest additions to a long list of crimes committed by the Syrian government."
"No one should be fooled by the government's claim that it is undertaking urban planning in the middle of a bloody conflict. This was collective punishment of communities suspected of supporting the rebellion. The UN Security Council should, with an ICC referral, send a clear message that coverups and government impunity won't stand in the way of justice for victims."
Ole Solvang, emergencies researcher, Human Rights Watch

Extensive demolition of dozens of high-rise residential and commercial buildings along the main road between Mezzeh Air Base and Daraya, a Damascus suburb

Controlled explosives and bulldozer have been used by the Syrian government to destroy thousands of residential buildings. Whole neighbourhoods are disappearing in a haze of construction rubble, laying waste to areas where people lived in their thousands in suburbs of Damascus and Hama. A 38-page report compiled and issued by Human Rights Watch comes complete with satellite images illustrative of their charges against the government of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

This is the regime whose negotiating representatives are appalled at the evident lack of loyalty expressed by the Syrian opposition in opposing the ongoing rule of President al-Assad. These regime loyalists are hugely affronted that Syrians, as represented by the opposition, comprised of Sunni Syrians whose fury against the brutally bloody destructive killing machine of al-Assad has brought Syria to the fiery revolutionary war destroying the country, have the nerve to present as Syrian patriots.

The planned demolitions are said to have taken place between July 2012 and 2013 in seven districts in and around Damascus and Hama, in what is taken to be pro-opposition areas. Government officials and the media that support them describe the demolitions as logical, organized urban planning; alternately a responsible move by the government -- during a time of ferocious civil war -- as a routine effort to remove buildings that were illegally constructed; a civil clean-up situation, nothing more, nothing less.

Human Rights Watch points out that there was nothing civil or civilian in the move to clear away urban blight; the enterprises were supervised by military forces targeting areas recently hit by fighting, and which the regime identified as home to thousands of Sunni Syrians supportive of the actions of the Syrian opposition forces. No other districts, particularly those known to be supportive of the government, were ever targeted for such controlled mass destruction activities.

Buildings were pulverized in areas targeted for destruction, while nearby other neighbourhoods stand whole and undisturbed, their residents complacently living their lives, while thousands in the destroyed areas became instant refugees. Residents in the affected areas said government forces proceeded to raze their homes with no prior warning. Making it impossible for them to save their belongings which were destroyed within the buildings reduced to rubble.

Local residents in the two Hama neighbourhoods which were destroyed under direction of the military, informed Human Rights Watch that opposition fighters had used the districts to enter and leave the city for convenience reasons relating to their location on the outskirts of the city. One woman living near Wadi Al-Jouz in Hama said the army announced over loudspeakers in her district "that they would destroy our neighbourhood like they destroyed Wadi al-Jouz and Masha al-Arbaeen should a single bullet be fired from here".

"It's not enough that there's some tangential military objective or benefit to conducting the demolitions" said Human Right Watch's Lama Fakih. "The standard really requires that it be militarily necessary and even with that military necessity there's a manner in which these demolitions need to take place that does not disproportionately harm civilians, which has not been the case here."