The Syrian National Coalition organized a photo exhibit inside the Brussels EU headquarters in collaboration with civil society organizations and European MPs. The photos, smuggled out of Syria by a defected military photographer codenamed Caesar, show industrial torture of detainees inside the Assad regime’s secret prisons.
The exhibit, opened on Monday June 13, is being held in a public area of the parliament’s grounds and will end on July 16th. It includes photos taken from inside military hospitals No. 601-607 located in the Mezzah district of Damascus. Bodies of dead detainees are usually taken to these hospitals in order to be photographed and documented by assigning a number and place of detention to each body.
Commenting on the event, the Syrian National Coalition’s Representative to the Benelux and EU, Mouaffaq Nyrabia said:
“The overwhelming sentiment of those who have viewed the Caesar exhibition today has been a testament to the importance of bringing these horrific crimes to the attention of Europe. These graphic photographs documenting the systematic torture and murder of Syrians by the Assad regime make for difficult viewing; however, they reflect the reality of what is happening in Syria today.
“As a result, the situation in Syria is now a global crisis which directly impacts international security. In this context, the Caesar exhibition this week is an important reminder that at the heart of this crisis is a regime whose disregard for Syrian lives is clear. Now more than ever, the Syrian people need the international community to fulfil its responsibilities in holding to account the perpetrators of such war crimes.
“As the European Parliament made clear today, the international community must not accept the false choice of working with Assad as the ‘lesser evil’ to ISIL and other extremists. The two forces are interlinked and the vast majority of Syrians neither want the tyrant or the terrorists. That is why I call on our European partners to intensify efforts to provide protection to the Syrian people and bring to an end the human rights crimes of the Assad regime and ISIL.” (Source: Syrian Coalition)
