Alhamdullilah (thank God) I never flinched from calling the spade a spade when it comes to criticizing repressive police states that torment and murder their own citizens in order to keep their tyrants in power. I am quite serene and happy to have a clear conscience something that no amount of money could buy.
But this principled stance couldn’t have been maintained without a high price my family and I had to pay and are still paying.
I have been blacklisted and shunned by many regimes including my own. On a number of occasions I was abruptly fired from media outlets for “saying things that shouldn’t have been said” and for “crossing the red lines.” And when traveling I am often stopped and made to wait for hours because my name is included in some regimes’ blacklists.
But I knew from the very inception that honest journalists and intellectuals must sacrifice for their being true to their rectitude and commitment to uphold the truth especially when living under evil regimes that accord no value whatsoever to liberty human rights and civil liberties.
But a journalist especially in the Arab region is not really worthy of the title he or she bears if they turn a blind eye to the nefarious crimes perpetrated in their vicinity or elsewhere on the ground that calling the spade a spade is politically incorrect and risky.
Well since when was telling and upholding the truth safe and risk-free? Didn’t the Prophet Muhammad (S) say “the greatest form of Jihad is uttering a word of truth before an unjust ruler?”
Having said this I feel I must once again communicate my feelings and convictions about the minority Alewite regime in Syria. I am absolutely sure that these feelings and convictions are shared by numerous honest men and women around the world.
To be sure I am not against the Syrian regime because it is Alewite just as I am not against Israel because Israel is Jewish. But I am against both regimes because they are evil beyond description.
What else can be said of a regime that has murdered hundreds of thousands of its own citizens destroyed more than a million homes raped tens of thousands of women and forced 13 million Syrians to leave their homes in order to extend the life span of its tribal or sectarian rule by a few more years.
This is not about Shiites vs. Sunnis. This is about a genocidal criminality that all humans regardless of their religious affiliations absolutely reject.
Torture and rape on massive scale
Human rights groups have recently put the number of people tortured to death at the hands of the Nazi-like regime in Damascus at more than 24000. The real number is likely to be much higher.
This week Palestinian activists in Syria revealed that five new bodies of Palestinian refugees who were tortured to death in Syria have been identified. This brings the total number of Palestinians tortured to death in Assad’s concentration camps dungeons and torture chambers to more than 330. Again the real number is likely to be much higher. Ironically this is done by the very regime that shamelessly justifies its very existence by hollow claims about resisting Zionism imperialism and the forces of reaction!!!!
But the naked truth which the Assad regime strives to hide with a massive firewall of lies and disinformation which explains why Israeli leaders have been openly urging the West to keep Assad in power at any price since that regime is viewed by all Zionist circles as a strategic asset for the Zionist entity.
As to the rampancy of rape mostly by Assad’s soldiers and paramilitary thugs known as Shabbiha a recent study reported “compelling findings” indicting the regime in this regard.
The study was conducted by Women Under Siege along with Columbia University epidemiologists the Syrian-American Medical Society and Syrian activists and journalists who spent the past year documenting and mapping incidences of sexual violence in the war-ravaged country
According to the study Assad’s forces have carried out 56 percent of all acts of rape. But the study says if you include pro-regime Shabbiha perpetrators the number is closer to 80 percent.
The study adds: “When it comes to men (who were the victims in 20 percent of the cases tracked by Women Under Siege) the figures are even more staggering. 90 percent of the reported sexualized violence against men was committed by government forces possibly due to the fact that these tend to occur in detention facilities. Meanwhile the Free Syrian Army has only carried out 1 percent of the documented sexual attacks.”
The Assad regime is a cancer upon the conscience of humanity. That is why it is an expression of criminal hypocrisy and evil moral duplicity to bomb IS in Syria and Iraq while keeping the Assad regime fully immersed in this orgy of evil.
Khalid Amayreh is a Palestinian journalist and current affairs commentator living in occupied Palestine
