Member of the Syrian Coalition’s political committee, Okab Yahya, said that the Assad regime continues to refuse to engage seriously in the political process. The regime also continues to commit crimes as it continues with the violent shelling of the liberated areas as well as the arrest of civilians and torturing them to death.
In a live broadcast on the Syrian Coalition’s page on Facebook on Tuesday, Yahya said that international community’s lukewarm response to the Assad regime’s crimes is mainly to blame for the regime’s insistence on pursuing a bloody military solution. He maintained that the implementation of international resolutions, most notably UN Security Council resolution 2254, is the only way out of the conflict.
“The Assad regime has not accepted any political solution and refuses to meet the demands of the Syrian people which were at their minimum in the early days of the revolution,” Yahya said. He blamed the Assad regime for all the devastation, suffering, and the ongoing carnage in Syria, noting that Assad sees in any concessions the beginning of the end of his rule.
Yahya strongly condemned the repeated violations of the Idlib agreement by the Assad regime forces and the Iranian terrorist militias. He pointed out that the Coalition keeps constant contact with the Turkish guarantor to protect the Idlib agreement, adding that Ankara insists on the protection of civilians in northern Syria.
Moreover, Yahya said that military escalation is one of the tools used by the Assad regime to cause chaos and dodge its political obligations, as is evidenced now in its attempts to disrupt the process of the launch of the constitutional committee.
Reports by rights groups point to daily arrests of civilians by the Assad regime, Yaha said. He pointed out that “the arrests, torture and murder of detainees are some of the tools being used by the regime to crush the revolution and deny the Syrian people their dignity.”
Yaha explained that the Assad regime refuses to discuss the issue of detainees, stressing the need for international human rights organizations and the United Nations to ratchet up pressure on the regime to force it to immediately release all detainees in its prisons. (Source: Syrian Coalition’s Media Department)
