The military and political forces of the Syrian revolution announced total rejection of the Assad regime’s continued attempts to forcefully displace the residents of the district of Alwaer in Homs, Mouadamiya and Madaya in rural Damascus. They warned the United Nations against mediating or supervising any evacuation deals similar to the one that was reached in the Damascus suburb of Daraya.
In a joint statement released on Sunday, the Syrian Coalition as well as FSA and rebel groups stressed that “all besieged areas are red lines for the Syrian people and that we would not allow any ceasefire or political negotiations to be used by the Assad regime to slowly carve up and conquer these areas.”
The statement warned that should the regime continues military operations “to terrorize and psychologically pressure civilians into leaving Alwaer district or any other besieged area, or if a single individual is expelled from Alwaer or any other besieged area, then the regime will have ended its adherence to any proposed ceasefire in a glaring fashion.” It stressed that “all revolutionary armed groups will resume exercising their legitimate rights to defend civilians against the regime’s aggressions.”
“If the international community persists in its failure to protect besieged civilians and lift the sieges imposed against them, then both the political and military wings of the opposition will reconsider their stances on the entire political process,” the statement added.
The statement called upon the International Syria Support Group (ISSG) “to transform the besieged areas into protected areas that can be neither targeted militarily nor besieged to deny them humanitarian access, in accordance with international law and United Nations resolutions agreed upon by all ISSG states.”
The statement went on: “The Assad regime and its allies have transformed forced sectarian cleansing into a clear and systematic policy that deprives civilians of their livelihoods, starves them to death, and then pushes them into ‘agreeing’ to leave their homes and neighborhoods.”
“This ‘kneel or starve’ policy, which is unlawful and amounts to a crime against humanity, has been enacted in over 14 regime-besieged areas that also saw widespread killings with forbidden weapons such as cluster munitions, white phosphorus, napalm, barrel bombs, and chemical weapons.” (Source: Syrian Coalition)
