Press release
Syrian Opposition Coalition – Syria
Department of Media and Communications
September 22, 2020
The Syrian Opposition Coalition (SOC) hails the anti-regime protests that took place in the town of Kanakir in rural Damascus on Tuesday in response to the Assad regime’s arrest of three women. The SOC expresses its full support for the protests as it condemns the Assad regime’s repeated attacks and violations in continuation of its decades-long policy of arrest and kidnapping that it has been pursuing in Syria.
The popular protests rejecting the Assad regime’s violations, crimes, arrests, and intimidation will not stop. The Syrian people will not kneel down or submit to military rule, assassinations, and executions that the regime continues to commit, or to its permanent violation of agreements and understandings.
The people who knew the taste of freedom cannot be brought back under the yoke of oppression and tyranny. What is taking place in Knakir today is nothing but a picture of the general scene of Syria that rejects tyranny and the rule of the thuggish regime and its security apparatus. Despite all international resolutions calling for the release of detainees, especially women and children, the Assad regime’s security forces are detaining more people in blatant defiance of the international community. The latest incidents in Kanakir confirm beyond doubt the isolation of the regime and its detachment from reality, and prove the fact that this regime does not belong to our world. Indeed, it is a brutal regime that insists on killing, arrest, and rejection of all political solutions that would bring the tragedy in Syria to an end.
The SOC calls on the United Nations and major actors to ratchet pressure on the Assad regime and its sponsors to force it to release the three women along with all detainees in its custody, especially women and children in line with the relevant international resolutions. We also reiterate that the release of detainees must not be subject to negotiations.
