Since Monday, hundreds of testimonies have reached us from Aleppo to describe the war the city continues to endure. Though the official figures of speech mention “Aleppo’s recapture by pro-government forces” or the “fall of Aleppo”, it is crucial to call what is going on there for what is really is: the systematic massacre of civil populations by the regime’s army and its supporters, with the unwavering support of the Russian armed forces.
The farewell messages of women and men awaiting death confront us with the horrors of what that is taking place. The same horrors which today find their climax in Aleppo began in Syria five years ago. It has resulted in hundreds of thousands being killed, mutilated, reported missing, displaced and to a massive influx of refugees.
These messages also shed unforgiving light on the responsibility of all those who -out of ideology, ignorance or laziness- have let the unthinkable occur. They signify that this 13th of December will certainly put an end to the hopes raised in 2011 in the societies of the Arab world and beyond, as we witness the rise of a new age of authoritarianism, embodied by regimes even more violent than those that preceded them.
As a collective of researchers, Noria has in the recent years attempted to analyze the Syrian crisis as closely as possible. As meaningless as this work of analysis may appear on this day of massacre, it prompts us to speak up against the racist and murderous errors of all those who, in the name of a so-called ’choice between two evils’ and a supposedly pragmatic stance, deny to Arab societies their right to a democratic state that they claim only ’strong men’ and their criminal henchmen could ’assume’. The same as those who imagine with unprecedented cynicism that the blood of the Aleppines can buy the West its security from the Islamic State.
While in France certain candidates for the presidency of the Republic defend the cause of the Syrian regime, one wonders which ’values’ such politicians champion, they whose passivity, sometimes even acceptance contributes to fuelling authoritarian domination, murder, torture, and absolute disregard for international humanitarian law and the dignity of mankind.
Collectif des chercheuses et chercheurs de Noria