Forgotten Indirect Victims in Syria

A Statement by Syrian Network for Human Rights – London

Hundreds of thousands of Syrians in cities and towns involved in the uprising suffer from a systematic and crippling blockade which blocks supplies of basic daily life needs particularly water, electricity, medication and food supply. In particular, bakeries in the besieged cities such as Homs, Idleb and large parts of their countryside in addition to many areas in Hama, Rural Damascus, Deir Ezzor and Daraa are unable to operate as wheat supplies and Butane gas cylinders used for bread production in those bakeries are deliberately blocked by security forces.

This bleak reality constitutes a collective punishment which the Syrian regime inflicts on large proportions of the population of various social and age categories. The primary victims of such measures are the vulnerable groups and those less capable of withstanding the blockade particularly newborns and the elderly dozens of whom pass away every day. While they are not shot directly by security forces, they constitute indirect victims that are unintentionally forgotten by the media which is overwhelmed by reporting direct victims of gunfire, snipers or torture.

SNHR stresses that it is important that such indirect victims of children and the elderly hundreds of whom fall every day victims to the collective punishment which the regime inflicts by besieging the areas in which they live. SNHR further calls on the international community and all international relief agencies to unite their efforts in demanding, immediately and without delay or maneuver,  the establishment of safe corridors to deliver food and medical supplies to all those who need them particularly those most afflicted in disaster-stricken areas in Syria. Delay in mobilizing the efforts of the international community and friendly regional powers is tantamount to a collusion in silence be it deliberate or unintentional over the suffering of hundreds of thousands of Syrians particularly children and the elderly leaving them defenseless in the face of slow death and systematic genocide which the Syrian regime has willingly used for over a year of the Syrian Revolution with suspicious silence by all those who remain silent -for reasons known and unknown- over the crimes against humanity which have been and are still being perpetrated in Syria.

Syrian Network for Human Rights

London 05-April-2012