Member of the Syrian Coalition’s political committee Oqab Yahya said that the figures the United Nations issued on Monday are damning evidence of the magnitude of the crimes being committed by the Assad regime against civilians, especially killings, forced displacement and demographic change.
Panos Moumtzis, the UN regional humanitarian coordinator for Syria, on Monday told reporters in Geneva that “we are seeing a massive displacement inside Syria… From January to April, there were over 920,000 newly displaced people.”
Yahya called for preserving all reports and investigations on Syria to be used as evidence of the Assad regime’s crimes. He stressed the need to transfer Syria to the International Criminal Court and hold those responsible for war crimes accountable.
The Assad regime is systematically emptying many areas across Syria of their local communities with the aim bringing about demographic change in the county, Yahya said. He warned that Assad regime deliberately emptied the liberated areas of its local population and replaced them with loyalists to the regime and Iran.
“The Assad regime and its Russian ally’s bombings, sieges and forced displacement are war crimes that the international community must confront and refer to international courts.”
Since early 2018, the Assad regime, Russia, and the Iranian terrorist groups have considerably intensified attacks against civilians in the besieged areas, using various types of weapons, including internationally prohibited weapons and chemical weapons.
The escalating military operations led to the mass forced displacement of people from various areas across Syria to Idlib and rural Aleppo. The largest mass forced displacement operation took place in eastern Ghouta, which was home to about 400,000 people. The majority of the areas that were targeted by these attacks were covered by the ‘de-escalation zones’ agreement. (Source: Syrian Coalition’s Media Department)
