“The withdrawal of Assad has ceased to be a priority” – is repeated in the European as well as International Summits.Some like Emmanuel Macron even dare to specify that they do not deny Assad’s crimes against humanity and that maybe one day they’ll demand accountability for those crimes. In this terrible moment when democracies define that a bloodthirsty dictator is unavoidable, we are not only walking on the graves of those who have been killed by the tormentor – but the words and actions of those politicians burry alive the revolutionaries.
Because the revolution is not dead. It rather is the prisoner of dictatorship. One year after the massacres in Aleppo, the revolutionaries are not only in the areas occupied and bombed by the regime but also in Assad’s torture centers. They are tens of thousands, as dozens of reports, irrefutable evidences and witness reports, testify. What started as a fight in the streets finds its continuation in those horror factories where they make the attempt to break humanity. Those torture centers are not only places of physical and mental destruction of the revolutionaries being held as prisoners but also a weapon of the regime to prevent new possible acts of resistance.
You do not necessarily enter those centers through an official arrest: Numerous journalists, writers, activists, demonstrators just “vanish” and the regime won’t give the slightest information on their subject. Often also relatives disappear when they try to get some news. Assad’s order of the day: the one who dares to remember there’s a revolution needs to suffer.
None of our leaders dares to say: “Keeping Assad in power is a necessity as is keeping his torture centers”. However, not demanding the dictator to stand down is supporting his crimes in this exact moment. The matter is not peace by negotiation, because the imprisoned revolutionaries are not given the possibility for negotiation. By watching Assad kill, we are not defending peace. We rather let him win the war by extinguishing his political opponents. By being silent about that systematic extinction we approve this enterprise of horror as well as its dehumanization which we name “disappearance”. Of course, we cannot forget the revolutionaries held prisoners by the other enemies of the Syrian revolution as ISIS or Jaish al-Islam and we also claim their freedom.
The revolution has not disappeared. Our companions haven’t disappeared. They fight against their total extermination in Assad’s torture centers. Even if we do not know exactly where they are. But Assad does. As does Putin. As does Macron. As does the European Union.
As it seems that Realpolitik and human rights get quite along with each other - that the democratic values are never better defended then by tolerating despots – we came to ask one very simple and realistic thing of our leaders: We want to deliver our solidarity messages to our companions and we do not except to spend another year without them. The freedom of the dictator is not a problem for democracy? So why the freedom of ours should be?"
