For example,
Jul 31, 2011 - Syrian soldiers stormed Hama and other flash points of unrest, leaving at least 136 dead, an activist said
Aug 1, 2011 - Syrian activists say at least eight people have been killed after government forces launched fresh attacks in several cities.
Aug. 4 - Syrian rights groups didn't have a clear count of casualties or injuries by Wednesday night, as a communications blackout resumed in the evening. Insan, a Syria-focused rights group based in Europe, said it accounted for 10 people killed by 10 a.m., and 86 injured by 11 a.m.
The number of dead is approaching 2000. More than were killed in Gaza during "Operation Cast Lead". And we all remember the hue and cry then.
Well, Ramzy Baroud (http://www.ramzybaroud.net/), an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com, is concerned, too, and I caught his thinking here:
...Syria was and will remain a target for Western pressures. But what needs to be realized is that these pressures are motivated by specific policies concerning Israel, and not with regards to a family-centered dictatorship that openly murders innocent civilians in cold blood. In fact, there are many similarities in the pattern of behavior applied by the Syrian Army and the Israeli Army. Reports of causalities in Syria's uprising cite over 1,600 dead, 2,000 wounded (Al Jazeera, July 27) and nearly 3,000 disappearances (CNN, July 28). Unfortunately, this violence is not new, and is hardy compelled by fear of international conspiracy to undermine the Baath regime. The 1982 Hama uprising was crushed with equal if not greater violence, where the dead were estimated between 10,000 and 40,000...
Besides the grossly incorrect comparison, which is to be expected, does Baroud expect us all to sit back and wait for a few more thousands of dead? (see here for a partial list by early April and here for news).
His thinking:
...there is only one way to read the future of Syria. The Syrian people deserve a new dawn of freedom, equality, social justice, free from empty slogans, self-serving elites and corrupt criminals. Syria and its courageous people deserve better. Much better.
They need better than Baroud, for sure.
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1 comment:
Syria's people deserve better than Arab apologists for one of the most brutal dictatorships in this century, whose disregard for human life was exceeded only by Nazi Germany, Stalin's Russia, Communist China, Pol Pot's Cambodia and Iraq under Saddam Hussein.
If the regime falls, it will be no thanks to a world that could not find its voice when unarmed civilians were massacred by the army that should have been protecting them in the first place.
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