Press release
Syrian Opposition Coalition – Syria
Department of Media and Communications
April 1, 2020
The Assad regime is Syria’s real epidemic and its cancer. Since it seized power, it has adopted the policy of denial in everything. It still denies there are demonstrations and a popular movement demanding freedom and dignity. It denies that it is bombing cities, public facilities, and medical centers. It denies that it used chemical weapons. It denies that it has detained hundreds of thousands of Syrians or that it has subjected them to the most brutal methods of torture. Today it denies the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic across the areas under its controls, especially in Damascus and Lattakia.
Sources on the ground confirm the rapid spread of the virus in the regime-held areas and that the pandemic got out of control in view of the fact that the Assad regime opened Syria’s borders wide for militias coming from Iran and Lebanon – now epicenters of the pandemic in the region – the deployment of elements of these militias throughout the country, and the regime’s failure to impose isolation and social distancing. This denial confirms that the Assad regime is determined to commit more major crimes against the Syrian people.
We call on the international community to ratchet up pressure on the Assad regime to force it to disclose the real numbers of the coronavirus cases and immediately release the detainees who are at serious risk of mass death from the disease. Meanwhile, we are avidly seeking to rid the Syrian people of this curse which has been perching on their chest for decades and which is to blame for the current situation in view of its greed and insistence on clinging to power.
