31 March 2020
In a misleading campaign led by China and Russia to support the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria, a number of countries urged U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Thursday, March 26, to request the immediate and complete lifting of sanctions imposed mainly by the U.S. and E.U. on the Assad regime, claiming that the sanctions are thwarting the regime’s efforts to counter the COVID-19 pandemic.
We at The Day After are surprised by these allegations. In fact, China and Russia – long supportive of the Assad regime in waging war against the Syrian people – have vetoed all Security Council resolutions aimed at protecting the lives of civilians, stopping violations of international humanitarian law, and delivering humanitarian aid to the people in need across borders.
China and Russia claim that sanctions are preventing the delivery of essential equipment to address the COVID-19 pandemic, such as testing kits and ventilators. But we find that these sanctions have never been an obstacle, especially for Russia and Iran, to provide the Assad regime with various types of weapons, warplanes, missiles and militias, which have led to the deaths of twice as many Syrians as deaths caused by COVID-19 worldwide. Moreover, we recall that these sanctions are not internationalist, have clear exceptions for humanitarian purposes, and have never prevented UN agencies, including the WHO, from providing the necessary medical and humanitarian support to Damascus.
For 9 years, the Syrian regime and its allies have been deliberately and systematically targeting hospitals, medical teams, infrastructure, markets, and civilians, with a clear disregard for human life. Moreover, the regime is still not responding to demands to release political detainees and to reveal the fate of those missing, including the recent demand of the UN Special Envoy to Syria, Mr. Geir Pederson.
As the pandemic spread, regime authorities denied the existence of any cases of COVID-19 until 22 March 2020, when they announced what they claimed to be the first case after an employee at the WHO took the test himself. Indeed, the Assad regime has already arrested many Syrian doctors who reported COVID-19 cases in Damascus. Instead of taking any precautionary measures, the Assad regime kept the country open and easily accessible to and from Iran, which has become an epicentre of the disease. These policies prove once again that this regime is neglecting the wellbeing of Syrians and violating their human rights and dignity in exchange for the continuation of its corrupted authority and foreign alliances.
We call on the international community, the United Nations, and humanitarian and human rights organizations to increase pressure on the Syrian regime to take the necessary measures to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 and to provide treatment and protection for all citizens across Syria. We call on them to demand the release of more than 130,000 political prisoners arbitrarily detained in Assad’s overcrowded prisons, whose lives are at risk as the pandemic spreads, and to allow the Red Cross to visit all detention centers. We call for the immediate implementation of Security Council Resolution 2254 without delay.
