Why does the UN Syria Envoy Gair Pedersen not recognise the torture prison and the massacre are President Bashar al-Assad’s primary instruments of governance?
Filmmaker Ronan Tynan currently completing ‘BRINGING ASSAD TO JUSTICE’ with Anne Daly listened to the UN Syria Envoy at the IIEA this week and was very troubled he seemed unable to recognise the true nature of the Assad regime, especially when the reports of the UN’s own Commission of Inquiry on Syria leaves no room for doubt.
Gair Pedersen the Norwegian UN Syria Envoy at the IIEA this week seemed oblivious to the fact that Syria is probably without dispute the world’s biggest crime scene with many egregious crimes against humanity still being committed by Assad and his allies Russia and Iran against the Syrian people. This is not to absolve others including ISIS of crimes against humanity but no group has committed or continues to commit warcrimes and worse on an industrial scale like the Syrian regime as can be confirmed by all independent human rights groups since the Assad dynasty was founded in 1970, and especially since 2011 when it began brutally crushing the peaceful uprising.
President Assad runs a network of torture prisons including his own Auschwitz called Saydnaya which Amnesty International has described as ‘a human slaughterhouse’ and what I found very troubling is that the UN Envoy made no mention of this systematic torture network. Even worse he seemed to oppose sanctions and talked about “changing behaviour” which from the point of the view of the families of the more than 130,000 still disappeared into this network of annihilation is a bit like telling Jews during the Holocaust that a programme of changing the Nazis behaviour would offer relief! As we know that is not only unrealistic it surely must have sounded shocking in the ears of the families who still have loved ones in Assad’s dungeons who are being tortured and starved to death.
Against that background to say that sanctions have been tried as the envoy did is incorrect when Russia has never been specifically sanctioned over its involvement in crimes against humanity in Syria and the country is Assad’s most important backer in terms of providing air power, and vital political cover for so much including its chemical attacks on civilians at the UN Security Council having used its veto to protect his regime multiple times including stopping the referral of Syria to the International Criminal Court.
Meanwhile, evidence of regime crimes are regularly reported in a very thorough and systematic way by the UN’s own International Commission of Inquiry on Syria since 2011 which include a rape campaign, chemical attacks, bombing of civilians including regular and systematic attacks on hospitals, schools, markets and even bread queues as well as camps for the IDPs or internally displaced families victims of which run into the millions, with the overwhelming majority forced to flee by the regime. Including it must be emphasised, the vast majority of the than six million Syrian refugees who are afraid to return home out of fear of Assad and his notorious security branches
In talking about engaging with the Assad regime while still torturing prisoners to death and as he noted implicitly still killing civilians in Idlib, amounts to investing it with legitimacy and normalising its crimes against humanity. The numbers being tortured, and more importantly have been tortured since 2011, runs into the hundreds of thousands. To make matters even worse the UN’s humanitarian arm is also implicated because in an agreement signed with the regime in 2012 it handed over effective control to the regime of billions in humanitarian aid that flowed into the country since then. That aid has been weaponised by the regime and clearly made the position of vulnerable civilians much worse because it has been distributed in clear violation of the Humanitarian Principles and much more seriously facilitated and help fund the regime’s crimes against humanity.
However, while one must obviously give Gair Pedersen the benefit of the doubt he is wasting his times if he does not recognise the nature of the Assad regime? Sanctions offer the only hope of bringing about change in Syria as without pressure the Assad regime whose primary instruments of governance are the torture prison and massacre — as Salwa Ismail shows in her classic study ‘The Rule of Violence — will only continue to gain legitimacy from the Syria Envoy’s efforts and normalise its crimes against humanity especially by his talk of “changing behaviour” implying these egregious crimes can be absolved without full accountability especially when the regime has explicitly and implicitly made clear repeatedly it is not going to change.
