Syria's Butcher and the World's Shameful Silence
By: Elias Bejjani*

June 26/2011

The free world and Arab countries ought to immediately adopt a unified, loud, forceful and clear stance in toward deterring the unprecedented barbaric and savage atrocities the brutal and oppressive Syrian regime has been mercilessly inflicting against Syria's peaceful public uprising.

It is very obvious that strategies of verbal and written warnings as well as imposing economic sanctions are not achieving any positive results. The free world's diplomatic rhetoric and approaches are falling on deaf ears, hardened hearts, and numbed consciences.  All peaceful and civilized means should instantly come to an end because in the eyes of Syrian dictator Bachar Al Assad and his totalitarian regime's thugs, they are futile and signs of hesitation, fear and cowardice.

We have for years cautioned that the Syrian Baathist dictatorship and its evil ally, the regime of the Iranian mullahs, as well as their armed proxies Hezbollah and Hamas, do not respond to words alone.  They do not by any means understand or master the language of condemnations, warnings, sanctions, tags of terrorism , logic or any peaceful tool that is human and civilized. The sole language that they comprehend and respond to is force and force alone.

Their sickening lies, depraved narcissism, culture of hatred and delusions of grandiose make them humiliate, ridicule and completely ignore those forces and countries who do not speak their own satanic language.  This kind of deranged mentality is always boldly expressed with no boundaries by Iran's President Ahmadinejad. With conceit and arrogance, he keeps on challenging the whole world while bragging that the Western countries are cowards and do not posses the guts to go to war.

More than one hundred days have passed since the beginning of the peaceful uprising of the Syrian public in pursuit of freedom, democracy, and human dignity.  This means having equal opportunities, respect for human rights, employment opportunities, an openness to the outside world and an end to all forms of corruption including embezzlement, injustice and discrimination. In spite of the unprecedented barbaric acts of mass murder that the totalitarian Syrian regime is exercising to control the uprising, it has been escalating around the clock on all levels and throughout all the Syrian territories.

In fearing for their life fifteen thousand unarmed Syrian citizens made up of mostly children, the elderly and women escaped from Syria and took shelter in the neighboring Turkey. Thousands, including children and teenagers, were arbitrarily arrested, mutilated, and brutally tortured. Almost fifteen hundred victims were killed at the hands of  President Bachar Al Assad's Alawite armed mobs, and thousands of houses were destroyed.

The Alawite minority to which Al Assad belongs is desperately trying to cling to power. The country's Alawite-controlled army is waging a vicious and merciless campaign to muffle the uprising using all sorts of weaponry including tanks, armored vehicles, artillery, jets, choppers and so forth.

The Syrian opposition inside Syria and abroad have claimed that the Syrian army’s Alawite leadership headed by the president's younger brother, Maher Al Assad who is aided by a number of his cousins and relatives, have executed hundreds of soldiers who refused to shoot at the peaceful demonstrators in several Sunni cities and towns.

The Kuwaiti Alseyasi daily reported that the executed soldiers and officers were secretly buried in mass graves in the cities of Daraa and Jisr al-Shughour with their military uniforms and weapons. The daily stated that the Syrian regime later alleged that Sunni fundamentalists and Jihadists killed and buried these soldiers. It is worth mentioning that the Syrian regime invited all foreign envoys in Damascus and some international media facilities to show them one of these mass grave to support their claims.

One might wonder why Syrian citizens are taking refuge in Turkey only and not also in neighboring Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon. The answer lies in the fact that Jordan has totally closed its borders with Syria. The Jordanian king is trying emphatically to distance his fragile kingdom from the Syrian uprising because he fears the same public protests might target him too.  On the other side, Iraq does not attract Syrian refugees due to safety and stability issues caused by the kind of violence and chaos that Iraq encounters on a daily basis.

Meanwhile Lebanese authorities have been arresting the Syrians who enter Lebanon and extraditing them back to Syria in breach of all international accords and laws. According to reports issued by well respected Human Rights organizations and the Syrian opposition leadership, four Syrian soldiers that the Lebanese Army extradited to Syria were executed on the same day. It is worth mentioning that the majority of Lebanon’s officials in the puppet regime were handpicked by the Syrian dictator personally during the twenty-eight years of Syrian occupation of in Lebanon that ended on 2005.  

We strongly believe that the Syrian butcher Bachar Al Assad, his armed mobs called Al Chabiha, and the Syrian army must be forced to stop immediately the killing of the Syrian people. It is very clear by now that this human and noble objective will not be achieved voluntarily by Al Assad and his regime. It must be enforced through military intervention under the UN flag as was the situation in many other countries. The butcher Al Assad must be arrested and put on trial with all his family members and aids who are leading the killing campaign. Such stone age creatures must be made accountable for their criminal acts.

In conclusion, Syria's Al Assad dictatorship regime must be toppled by force as soon as possible and the Syrian people given the chance to govern themselves under the auspices and help of the United Nations. The Arab and the Western democracies need to understand once and forever that with Al Assad's Syrian regime in power instability in the Middle East will continue. Instability that includes Lebanon never enjoying independence, the continuing chaos prevailing in Iraq, Jordan’s sovereignty always being threatened, and Hamas and Hezbollah continuing to grow stronger. In other words, the global war on Islamic fundamentalist terrorism will not be won and the Israeli-Arab conflict will never be solved.

*Elias Bejjani
*Canadian-Lebanese Human Rights activist, journalist and political commentator
*Email phoenicia@hotmail.com
*Web sites http://www.10452lccc.com & http://www.clhrf.com
*Mailing phoenicia group:  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Phoenicia/
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