Using the falling roofs and walls of bombed buildings as his canvases, Syrian artist Aziz Al-Asmar seeks to document the suffering the Syrian people have been enduring as a result of the crimes the Assad regime and its allies have been committing over the past several years.
For the past year, Al-Asmar has moved amongst the wreckage of bombed buildings, painting on the wrecked and leaning walls and roofs the story of a people who did not abandon their insistence on regaining freedom despite the bloody crackdown by the Assad regime.
Al-Asmar told the Anadolu agency that he plans to draw a mural on a wall of one of the destroyed buildings in the town of Binnish to the east of Idlib. The mural will tell the story of the Yarmouk camp for Palestinian refugees in southern Damascus and to expose the lies the Assad regime and its allies made about the camp.
Al-Asmar said that the revolution is not waged with weapons only, noting that he chose drawing as a form of resistance and struggle. “I decided to draw murals on the walls of destroyed buildings so that the message is stronger and to show that our justice is in the heart of our cause. I want to demonstrate to the world how the Assad regime destroyed all semblance of life, especially schools, homes, and hospitals.”
Al-Asmar pointed out that his drawings are intended to send messages to inside Syria and the outside world. “These drawings are a message that our cause is for freedom and justice. It is the cause of a people who demanded the most basic rights but who were met with the most lethal weapons. “But one day this people will emerge victorious despite all the losses.”
The liberated areas have been subjected to relentless aerial and artillery bombing by the Assad regime and its allies over the past seven years, which caused massive damage and reduced many towns and villages to rubble.
Rights groups said that as much as 90 percent of many cities, towns and villages has been destroyed. The Assad regime is using barrel bombs and other indiscriminate weapons in the bombings of the liberated areas. Many rights groups said that these attacks constituted war crimes as they called for the referral of Syria to the International Criminal Court. (Source: Syrian Coalition’s Media Department)
