It was April 7, 2018, when numerous airstrikes were carried out against residential areas in Douma, then a rebel-held Syrian city, about 10 kilometers northeast of the center of Damascus.
Hundreds of Syrians felt burning eyes and breathing problems. Dozens of men, women and children choked to death in their homes. Lifeless bodies were found on floors and in stairwells, many with white foam coming from their mouths and nostrils. Medics reported the death of at least 49 individuals, and the wounding of up to 650 others. Rescue workers told that the chemicals were likely used in hostilities, which came almost a year after the deadly sarin gas attack in the town of Khan Sheikhun.
The state news media in Syria denied that the government had used chemical weapons, and accused rebels of spreading “fake news”.
Nevertheless, in September 2018 the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Syria reported that “a vast body of evidence collected by the commission suggests that, at approximately 7:30 p.m., a gas cylinder containing a chlorine payload delivered by helicopter struck a multi-story residential apartment building located approximately 100 meters southwest of Shohada Square.”
An image grab taken from a video released by the Syrian civil defence in Douma shows unidentified volunteers giving aid to children at a hospital following an alleged chemical attack on the rebel-held town on April 8, 2018. A suspected chemical attack by Syria’s regime sparked international outrage, after rescue workers reported dozens killed by poison gas on rebel-held parts of Eastern Ghouta near Damascus. President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and its ally Russia denied the allegations of a chlorine gas attack on the town of Douma, calling them “fabrications”. (Photo by HO / various sources / AFP)
On March 1, 2019, inspectors from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons concluded that a “toxic chemical” containing chlorine was used in an attack last April.
What is more, the April strike was only the latest in a string of alleged chemical attacks in the enclave of eastern Ghouta. According to the Berlin-based Global Public Policy Institute, there were 336 uses of chemical weapons in Syria, ranging from nerve agents to chlorine bombs. And 98 percent of the attacks can be attributed to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s military or allied forces, with the Islamic State group responsible for the rest.
Using chemical weapons is outlawed. It is a crime against humanity. Thus, Assad should face trial as a mass murderer. But the bloody dictator has been supported by the Kremlin.
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It was also another spring day, on March 3, 2019, with long-waited sunshine and blue skies in Sevastopol. Thousands of people of all ages, including families with children, queued to watch and take pictures of a quite unusual exhibition – a showcase of military vehicles from Syria. A train with weapons arrived to Crimea from Russia, and before coming to Sevastopol railway station, stopped in Kerch. The national-wide propaganda exhibition, titled “Syrian Breakthrough,” organized by the Russian Defense Ministry, is scheduled to make over 60 stops and travels from Moscow to Vladivostok through Crimean peninsula, that was annexed from Ukraine by the Russian Federation in February–March 2014.
Echelon consists of several open platforms, with about 500 pieces of military equipment on them allegedly “captured from terrorists in battles in Syria.” Together with those, which are claimed to be seized from Islamic State militants, other vehicles carry markings of the Ankara-backed Free Syrian Army, that fights against the Assad dictatorship.
People gather by freight cars of a train displaying military vehicles captured from Syrian rebels and jihadists at a railway station in Sevastopol, Crimea, on March 3, 2019. The train carrying war “trophies” left Moscow on February 23 and will travel 28,500 kilometres visiting 60 cities along the way before returning to the Russian capital in April. Russia has been a key player in the Syrian conflict since launching a military intervention in 2015 in support of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime. (AFP)
Russia began bombing Syria in September 2015. According to many analysts, until Russia intervened, the despot Assad, who had been slaughtering his own people for almost eight years, was losing the war against Syrian rebels. Even though Moscow has always said it’s been targeting Islamic State fighters, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, more than 18,000 people, nearly half of them civilians, have been killed in Russian air strikes on Syria.
In 2016, the medical charity Doctors Without Borders reported that Russia bombed a medical clinic in Idlib. In September 2017 it reported that a series of strikes killed 69 people in just 72 hours.
Why doesn’t Russia exhibit bodies of these numerous victims?
Why doesn’t show the photos of Syrian families, killed in Assad’s gas attacks?
Wasn’t war in Syria a training ground for the Russian army, with use of new weapons that can be use in the future against its neighbors, such as Ukraine?
If history teaches us anything, it is that massive human rights violations must not be left unpunished.
Syrian war criminals should not be whitewashed, as well as their supporters. They should be brought to the justice and the world must build institutions and tools to implement this. The Syrians suffocated by chlorine and sarin, as well as those who were tortured, executed or disappeared just because of one tyrant’s grip on power, should not be forgotten.
Persecution of the organizers of massacres is also important if we want to prevent them in the future anywhere on the planet. At the time when Russia parades propagandistic military “artifacts,” International investigators should collect evidences from refugees, victims of Assad crimes, provide sanctions not only against Assad, but also against those, who have supported him, and show us soon another “exhibition”: a rule of justice and accountability for atrocities committed in Syria.
