The critical role of the 'human rights' organization in the war against Syria was again tarnished with Amnesty International's report on Syria in 2017/2018, followed by an equally tendentious article in Melbourne's 'Age' newspaper by Claire Mallinson, Amnesty's national director for Australia.
In the name of human rights, these organizations have actually exacerbated the crisis in Syria. They have never dealt honestly with the main cause, following the wishes of the US and its allies since seven years ago to destroy the Damascus government, as part of a larger plan to destroy Iran-Syria-Hezbollah strategic axis in the Middle East. Democracy, human rights and the best interests of the people of Syria have never been on the agenda of these governments. They are cold-blooded and fearlessly do whatever they want.
By calling armed rebels the 'opposition', these human rights organizations hide their true nature. Referring to the Syrian government as a 'regime', instead of the legitimate Syrian government, which represents Syria at the United Nations and represents the interests of the Syrian people, they are trying to undermine it. Accusing him of carrying out attacks indiscriminately against his own civilian population, from their polluted sources, and they are trying to curse him. By accusing him of carrying out chemical weapons attacks, without any evidence, they perpetuate lies and fabricate armed groups and governments that support them.
Behind the mask of 'human rights', these organizations promote the western government's war agenda. Some are worse than others. Human Rights Watch may also be an official attachment from the US Department of State, but they all play the same duplicate game.
East Aleppo is an example of what we see now in East Ghouta, a district on the outskirts of Damascus where hundreds of thousands of people are held hostage by armed groups of takfiri. Aleppo is infiltrated by these groups in 2012 and the eastern sector of the city is gradually taken over, as the army gets pressure on the other front.
Until then, Aleppo a commercial, multi-religious and multi-ethnic city, had managed to get out of the war, but was now sucked in. There is nil support in Aleppo for takfiris but they have guns and they are ready to kill to get their way. Attacking the position held by the government, they destroyed the old city center with a brutal attack. Dig a tunnel, blow up some of his most famous buildings. Art architecture, history, does not mean anything to them. They destroyed the square tower at the Umayyad mosque and the attacks that led to the destruction of the ancient library in the mosque and the massive destruction of Aleppo souk, one of the oldest and most colorful markets in the world.
In the districts they control, they commit the most repressive massacres and murders and sharia law institutions. Under the secular government of Syria, women and men have equal rights before the law, under the tyranny women have no rights granted to men. They ignited the sedition of all they did not consider true as true Muslims (Shia and Alawit): one of their first acts was the abduction of two orthodox Christian prelates, until now never seen again. Armed groups and foreign governments are responsible for the dire situation in East Aleppo.
But the Syrian government, the 'regime' they choose, is blamed by media and human rights organizations. White Helmets who are always together with terrorist groups, and funded by the same government have been arming and financing them, used as the main propaganda. Their gradual rescue filled the corporate media pages.
Syrian military with Russian air support, began to destroy these groups in East Aleppo, propaganda also appeared to order to save terrorist groups. The 'siege' of East Aleppo is exactly the same as the 'siege' in East Ghouta. The people trapped in East Aleppo were taken hostage, as did the people of East Ghouta by some of the harshest groups on earth.
These trapped civilians are their trump cards. Those who try to leave, are killed, just like the unfeeling murdered civilians trying to get out of Ghouta East. After negotiating a safe evacuation for the terrorists from East Aleppo, with their families and followers. The media and the 'human rights' organization took a position by accusing the Syrian government of forcibly removing them. They did not mention the captured Syrian soldiers detained by Takfiri and massacred before they left. They did not mention civilians killed by takfiris when they tried to escape.
They are the ones who target civilians deliberately. At Adra, at the northern end of Ghouta, they massacred dozens of men, women and children by 2013, decapitated several people and pushed others into the bread oven. In 2015, in Douma, they place men and women into cages as hostages, to prevent possible progress of the Syrian army. They shoot Damascus downtown every day with mortars, killing civilians, including children, women and the elderly.
In his report on Syria for 2017/2018 Amnesty International (AI) continues a misleading narrative of the fate of East Aleppo and eastern Ghouta. Those who support it financially may have to consider where they can put in their money and their good intentions for better use. The AI refers to districts in eastern Ghouta controlled or 'contested' by unspecified armed opposition groups and repeats the hoax story that the Syrian government carried out a chemical weapons attack on Khan Shaikhun in April last year. (Recall recent remarks by US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis that the US has no evidence of a Syrian government using sarin, the agent allegedly fired at Khan Shaikhun.) The AI has no proof of this, so why declare this as a fact except to do more damage propaganda on the Syrian government?
AI refers to 400,000 people 'besieged' in East Ghouta by the Syrian military, when the real situation is that their district has been infiltrated and they are held hostage by armed groups. They are surrounded from within by these groups, put in and can not go except at the risk of being killed.
The Syrian army does not impose a siege, it tries to solve it. The Syrian government is accused of withdrawing access to medical care and basic necessities, when one or another of these armed groups, over the years, have sought to establish humanitarian corridors. Even now the Syrian government is waiting with medical care, buses and accommodation but the civilians trying to go are shot and killed, as they are in East Ghouta.
The AI Reference of 'forcible transfer' from East Aleppo, and the way the 'armed group' there was 'compelled' to surrender and negotiate an agreement that ended 'unlawful siege' was a terrible distortion of reality.
What is unlawful about the situation in East Aleppo is the presence of armed groups. What breaks the law is the money and weapons given to them by the US and its allies, in violation of international law. What breaks the law is killing civilians and limiting their freedom (outside of East Aleppo). what is legitimate is the endeavor that was finally succeeded by the Syrian government to sever the ties of these groups.
After releasing an AI report on Syria, Claire Mallinson, the national director of AI for Australia, was assigned to print under the title 'Australians Need to Act on Syrian Monstrosities' (Melbourne Era, March 1, 2018) . Its audiences can be won because the Australian media has never reported the war in Syria at all but only pumps out the same propaganda that appears in US or UK media. Others have witnessed this 'peculiarity' in Syria for many years, and it's the same as Ms Mallinson.
This monstrosity begins with conspiracies, the United States, Britain, France and their regional Middle East allies, to destroy the Syrian government. Thus attacking by turning off Iran-Syria-Hezbollah strategic alliances, whatever the Syrian people cost and whatever their aspirations. They turned to the government's use of takfiri representatives to do their dirty work in Syria, following Russian and Chinese refusals to allow the UN Security Council to be used as a protector for the air war. These governments are arming and financing these groups. They do not care who they are, where they come from and what they believe as long as they are ready to carry weapons and bring Syria to its knees. This is the main villain in Syria.
Including the illegal US presence in Syria, the killing of Syrian civilians and its attacks on the legitimate armed forces of the government and the Syrian people, the attack on which the Australian plane has taken part and has taken many lives of Syrian soldiers.
All of this has led to a huge incident, massive destruction in Syria, involving the loss of 400,000 lives and displacement of millions of others beyond the Syrian border. But now the same government and media that brought you this war, and the same 'human rights' organization that supported it with a one-sided report, expressed their anger over the suffering in East Ghouta, as if this had nothing to do with them
Cruelty in the eyes of the Syrians, if not in the eyes of Ms Mallinson, equivalent to, if not worse. The sanctions genocide that preceded the attack on Iraq in 2003 and the crime that followed this attack, carried out by the same government responsible for the onslaught in Syria. Suffering in East Ghouta is terrible and anger is justified, but the cause should be identified and does not include the efforts of the Syrian government and troops to defend the country from outside attacks.
Malstromin Mallinson has a different order, including chemical weapons 'reportedly' used 'again' by the Syrian government against its own people. This propaganda has been repeatedly played by 'activists' knowing that the media and 'human rights' organizations will fix it. There is no evidence of a chemical weapon attack ever committed by the Syrian military. On the contrary, the number of evidence of such attacks planned and carried out by takfiris so far, including the attack in Damascus in August 2013.
Ms Mallinson refers to a UN report that Syria is developing a chemical weapon 'with North Korean help', binding neatly on two US government target demons. This is another strategy, which comes from Washington and is designed again to root out the Syrian government and prepare it for anything that might happen next.
What he does not say is that this 'report' remains unpublished, that the author is unknown, that what we know comes from a report in the New York Times, which sells lies in Iraq and has promoted the war against Syria from the very beginning. Details given from materials suspected to be from North Korea show that it is not possible to relate to chemical weapons, which are not owned by Syria, for having destroyed them all under international control. Given the nature of this really tendentious account, why would Ms Mallinson want to raise it except to further blacken the name of the Syrian government?
He refers to the 'warring party' in East Ghouta as if both were valid when only one, the Syrian government. The other is a very violent armed group sponsored by the West, in violation of international law. The presence of US troops and the 'coalition' in Syria is a violation of international law and the killing of Syrian soldiers and civilians is a vexing offense against the law. The only legitimate armed forces in Syria are the Syrian army, which has lost tens of thousands of young men defending its country, and invited powers, such as Russia, the Iranian ground forces and Hezbollah.
Thousands of 'ordinary men, women and children' said they risked the annihilation of the siege by the Syrian army in East Ghouta. In fact, the main source of risk for the East Ghouta community is not the Syrian government but the armed groups that hold them hostage and make it a human shield.
The Syrian military is trying to unleash their grip, because any army is in a comparable situation. Ms Mallinson accused the 'Russian-backed Syrian regime' of destroying an agreed ceasefire, ignoring evidence that Takfiri violated and killed civilians who were trying to escape from their grip. Just the last few days they have fired on a family trying to leave, killing parents and shooting children even after they arrive at a Syrian army checkpoint.
They fire mortars into the city center of Damascus every day. There is no reference in his account to the 'backed American' or 'backed Saudi' armed groups who have created this hell on earth. Finally, he appealed to the Australian government, for assuming his position at the UN Human Rights Council, to 'show leadership' by ending this 'abomination'.
The problem here is that the Australian government is part of the problem. They fully support US policy in Syria and have taken part in armed action in Syria, in violation of international law.
In September, 2016, his plane joined a US-led airstrike near Deir Ezzor that killed perhaps 100 Syrian troops and allowed ISIS to regain lost positions. Australia has not apologized for its participation in this outrage, just repeating the US line that the attack was a mistake, which it is not. When the Australian delegation took his seat at the United Nations Human Rights Council, he only echoed US policy, attacking the Syrian 'regime' and its Russian supporters.
If Australia has a role in Syria, its moral role, its legal role, its independent role, should not be a US mouthpiece. They must abstain from US illegal acts and Takfiri violence against the Syrian people, their government and their army.
They must support the government's efforts in Damascus to restore its vigilance over the whole of Syria and not support US efforts and behind it, Israel, to split it.
They must support the people of Syria, not the government's actions that have destroyed their country.
They must define the policies based on the causes of the situation in Syria, not how they are misconstrued in the media, by 'activists' involved in takfiri groups, by the Syrian Human Rights Observatory, by White Helmets and by deceptive or deliberately dishonest of' human rights' who play politics, not serving truth, justice and humanitarian interests.
It will be a credible role for Australia, an independent role, but this is not one that the government will adopt. Everyone should pay attention to the loss of life in East Ghouta. Ms. Mallinson has no mortgage on morality and empathy with human suffering. How do people think of Syria, the Syrian people peeled in the heart of Damascus every day, the Syrians who have lost father, brother and son in this conflict, the Syrian people whose relatives are trapped in Ghouta East or have been killed by an armed group holding the whole area with a knife to his throat? Is there anyone outside who thinks Syria wants to live under their rule?
The Syrians know what they want, without a doubt, the cleansing of these gangs from their midst, whatever it takes. They fully support their army and government. Their interests are the Australians, or others who believe, should support, not the politicized interests of Amnesty International.
Anger will not solve anything: it just acts as a pretext to bring war to a new level of destruction. The root of this violence is clear: the decision of an outside force to destroy the Syrian government, their support for armed groups who are violating the values that these governments ought to represent and their refusal to let the war end. In order for the violence to end, this is the root that needs to be recognized and revoked.
Author: Jeremy Salt a lecturer at the University of Melbourne, Bosporus University (Istanbul) and Bilkent University (Ankara), specializing in modern Middle Eastern history. His latest book is "The Unmaking of the Middle East. Western Disturbance History in Arab Land "