Friday 24 November 2017

Starving children in Eastern Ghouta

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The Guardian has a harrowing story today about suffering in the siege of Eastern Ghouta in Syria.


The region suffered in the deadly 2013 sarin gas attack that nearly provoked a US intervention in the war, an intervention that might have led to the end, in the long run, of Assad. Ed Miliband's decision to oppose British intervention led to it being defeated in the House of Commons, which led Mr Obama to back down. Things have grown steadily worse since then. Siege Watch, a project that tracks blockades in Syria, has said the area is “on the brink of disaster”.


A story of terrible suffering and I have no wish to defend the Assad regime, but have some questions. Amnesty International says starve or surrender sieges are war crimes, but are they? And why don't rebel troops surrender? I presume inhabitants are being held captive by rebels but Guardian doesn't say a word about this. It reminds me of coverage of Eastern Aleppo.

Russia produces fake news but so does the Guardian, CNN etc.

The Guardian story make no sense. 


Vanessa Beeley is the daughter of a British diplomat who was in Jerusalem until 1948, she is very much aligned against US and Israeli foreign policy and the Syrian rebels and visits Syria with the permission of the Syrian government. I do not vouch for the truth of what she says and she is not neutral or balanced (but then nor is the Guardian line), but going to her Facebook wall I find a different story, worth bringing to your attention.

I interviewed this beautiful refugee from East Ghouta in August 2017. She was selling vegetables in Jaramana #Damascus like so many others who fled the international terrorists when they occupied, looted or destroyed the homes of these Syrian civilians.

Her reaction is very telling and moving when she is asked if these terrorists brought "freedom and democracy". It just says it all, without words.
The lies keep rolling in about E Ghouta. Please remember East #Aleppo, #Madaya.
Eva Karene Bartlett on the Madaya lie: http://www.mintpressnews.com/order-returns-to-western-sy…/…/
From Sophie Mangal on East Ghouta:
"The cease-fire regime has been established there since July 2017, as this area is one of four de-escalation zones. At the same time, Eastern Ghouta is occupied by various militant groups as Jaysh Al-Islam, Faylaq Al-Rahman, and Jabhat Al Nusra.
The humanitarian aid from the Syrian government, Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC), UN and Russia on a regular basis is delivered to Eastern Ghouta despite regular provocations and mortar shillings of the militants.
Not so long ago, on November 12, joint UN and SARC humanitarian convoy of 24 trucks arrived in Duma, Eastern Ghouta. Two weeks earlier, on October 30, 49 trucks loaded with vaccines, food, drinking water, and necessities made it to the areas of Kafr Batna and Sacqba to help more than 40,000 people.
Earlier, on September 24, another humanitarian convoy with the assistance of Russia entered Eastern Ghouta. The convoy delivered food, medicine and warm clothes for the locals. Later, it became known that most of the supplies had not reached civilians and fell into the hand of Faylaq Al-Rahman and al-Nusra militants, who took all the goods to their warehouses.
Consequently, it is exactly the militants who aggravate the humanitarian situation in Eastern Ghouta, what has been exactly mentioned by Dujarric. In fact, the militants deprived seriously ill women and children of the opportunity to get daily necessities and medicine. It seemed that the United States works hard to achieve exactly this goal: the White House administration has made every effort to deliver humanitarian aid to the starving militants.
By the way, without going into too much detail, the Western Mass Media has supported the militant’s information campaign of the opposition militants on Facebook and Twitter going by the name #AssadBesiegesGhota.
The authors of the campaign created a series of short messages, tweets, photos, and videos, which mainly depict sick and malnourished children with only one purpose – to evoke feelings of pity and compassion among users of social networks around the world."

4 comments:

  1. Vanessa Beeley commented: Thank you but just a point I would like to make . 1. the Syrian conflict is not about "Assad" or his "regime", its about the Syrian people refusing to accept anything imposed upon them by outside forces and defending their secular state & way of life ie not accepting an Islamic state, "moderate" extremist (Muslim Brotherhood) or extreme extremist (ISIS, Al Qaeda etc). Why does everyone have to apologise for defending the actions carried out by the Syrian state to actually provide for its people under attack from military, economic and media terrorism? If we keep on avoiding addressing this element or the complexity of the situation we do a profound disservice to the courageous people of Syria.

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  2. The Left has a long history of backing anti American monsters, of course. Jeremy Corbyn is an example. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/what-corbyn-shares-with-mugabe-and-mladic-cv2hnfhn2

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  3. "The UN high commissioner for human rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, described the siege of eastern Ghouta as an “outrage” last month."
    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/24/syria-eastern-ghouta-siege-talks?CMP=share_btn_fb

    "GENEVA (27 October 2017) – The situation of at least 350,000 besieged civilians in Eastern Ghouta, on the outskirts of Damascus, is an outrage, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said on Friday, as he called on the parties to the conflict to allow badly needed food and medical supplies to get into the area."
    http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=22312&LangID=E

    ...so 'the outrage' is 'the situation' not 'the siege'...

    Also: "Eastern Ghouta has been under siege by Government forces for more than four years." What's new? Stuff like this:

    "Unidentified attackers reportedly stormed and looted a food warehouse in the Eastern Ghouta town of Hamourya on 19 October. The following day several hundred people allegedly looted a second warehouse in the town..."
    http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=57974#.WhlAbmcgZ0t

    "In addition, various armed groups controlling Eastern Ghouta have restricted the work of humanitarian organisations, and clashes between these groups have for months limited civilians’ freedom of movement within the region."

    No, the quote is not from the Guardian... but from the UN Human Rights Office:
    http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=22312&LangID=E

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  4. Zeid is a Jordanian Prince and pretender to the throne of Iraq who is not neutral in the war between Iran and the Sunni powers. He is a sinister figure who wants blasphemy to be illegal worldwide. You can be sure it is not offences to the Christian God that he wants to punish.

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