President of the Syrian Opposition Coalition (SOC), Nasr al-Hariri, stressed that the Syrian revolution will continue until the Syrian people’s goals of freedom, dignity and democracy are achieved. He made these remarks at an official ceremony marking the tenth anniversary of the Syrian revolution at the Free Aleppo University in the town of Azaz.
Al-Hariri said that “with every passing day, we are getting increasingly certain that our revolution has been and is still an inevitable choice and a historical necessity for Syria and the region.” He added that “the boys of Dara’a sparked the revolution, while its youth carried its flags high. Our responsibility is to continue down the road until we regain freedom. The Syrian people’s demands are legitimate, namely for regaining freedom, justice, democracy and building a civil state.”
Moreover, he pointed out that the history of the Assad regime is dark and replete with massacres and atrocities, from the massacres of Hama, to Jisr al-Shughur, Aleppo and to the massacres that the whole world witnessed, many times live on TV screens, throughout a decade of this regime’s war on the Syrian people.”
“The Assad regime has no allies around the world except the authoritarian regimes that resemble it. Whoever seeks to rehabilitate the Assad regime will drown with it.”
Al-Hariri went on to say that the allies of the Syrian revolution are yet to afford the price of maintaining international law and defending the principles of freedom and justice. “Here comes our responsibilities. We have to renew our effectiveness before the world; improve the performance of our institutions; and exert pressure on international parties to shoulder their responsibilities.”
He stressed that the Assad regime is mainly to blame for the rapidly deteriorating living and economic conditions in Syria as well as the growing suffering of the Syrian people. He said that “the Assad regime, since its seizure of power in Syria, has stolen the livelihoods of the Syrian people. Since the beginning of the revolution, it has used siege and starvation as a weapon against children and the elderly in order to kill their will of emancipation. It has also depleted Syria’s resources to fund its militias and bring in foreign mercenaries and occupiers.”
He also stressed that the Assad regime today directs the starvation weapon to our people living under its terrorist rule and even to its loyalists in order to extort the international community.
“The Western sanctions exclusively target the Assad regime and its pillars while sparing ordinary citizens and excluding humanitarian aid, a fact that the criminal Assad himself admitted when he said that the economic crisis is not due to Western sanctions but to the smuggling of money into Lebanon. This thuggish regime is sensing its downfall as the major thieves of the regime began to smuggle what they had looted from the people to outside the country. (Source: SOC’s Media Department)
