Ruba Habboush, Vice-president of the Syrian Opposition Coalition (SOC), said that the Assad regime has turned Syria into a global hotbed of violence against women since the revolution broke out in 2011.
In remarks she made on the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, Habboush said that Syrian women are still suffering from large-scale violence at the hands of the Assad regime which has waged a brutal war on them and the Syrian people in response to their calls for freedom.
She pointed out that the Assad regime is responsible for the deaths of thousands of women, citing reports by rights groups which estimate that nearly 30,000 women have so far been killed at the hands of the Assad regime since March 2011.
Moreover, Habboush said that the Assad regime would not have committed all these crimes had it not been for the Russian-Iranian encouragement and Russia’s obstruction of action at the UN Security Council through its repeated use of veto.
Habboush called for concrete action by the international community to put an end to these crimes against the Syrian people, especially against women. She said: “Tens of thousands of women are still in the detention centers of the Assad regime suffering horrific sexual abuse and physical torture. It is imperative that the international community take effective action to ensure their release from the prisons of the Assad regime.”
Habboush stressed that the violence of the Assad regime and its backers was not limited to physical torture, sexual abuse, bombardment and destruction of towns and villages. She said that the Assad regime is responsible for the mass forced displacement of millions of Syrian women, many of whom are now the only breadwinner for their families and living in extremely harsh conditions, especially in IDP and refugee camps. She also said that many Syrian women have been subjected to exploitation.
She went on to say that despite all odds and the harsh reality, Syrian women have been a major pillar in the revolution and will remain a real lever preventing the collapse of thousands of households. She also said that Syrian women will remain the only safe haven and hope for rebuilding the Syrian society, as well as an effective partner for moving on to a new Syria. (Source: SOC’s Media Department)
