Press release
Syrian Opposition Coalition
Department of Media and Communications
August 14, 2021
A harrowing video footage has emerged showing the burning of detainees’ corpses by the Assad regime’s military intelligence in Dara’a province. The footage is dated between 2011 and 2013.
These scenes of cremation of human bodies are reminiscent of the holocausts of the mid-20th century. It is as if the regime’s history is still confined in that era, the era of killing, burning and exterminating people just because they have a political or religious opinion that contradicted the ruling authority.
This leaked footage is just a sample of the regime’s widespread and systematic operations that have affected tens of thousands of detainees and forcibly disappeared persons. This brutal regime still has more heinous crimes that will appall the world with their extreme brutality. The Caesar photos of detainees killed under torture and starvation in Assad’s prisons are still imprinted in the memory of everyone who saw them.
The Syrian Opposition Coalition (SOC) reiterates its calls on the international community to take urgent, effective action against this criminal regime and its allies. It stresses the need to support the international efforts to hold all war criminals accountable, especially the criminal Bashar al-Assad.
The SOC also calls on the United Nations to activate the principle of responsibility to protect the populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity, including the implementation of Chapter VII of the UN Charter in accordance with UN General Assembly resolution 1/60 of September 16, 2005.
The active states in the UN Security Council are required to exert real pressure in order to save the detainees and ensure their release from the dungeons of the murderous Assad regime. Action is also required to support political transition in accordance with the Geneva Communique of 2012 and UN Security Council Resolutions 2118 and 2254 and in accordance with the UN General Assembly Resolution 67/262 which provides for the formation of a transitional governing body with full executive powers.
