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Ja'afari: The West won’t be able to cover impacts of its economic terrorism against Syria, its allegations on humanitarian keenness won’t hide the truth of its crimes against the Syrian people

Wednesday, 16 September 2020
Presenter: 
H.E Dr. Bashar Ja'afari
Location: 
The security Council

 

 

Mr. President,

Today, 75 years after the victory in World War II and the founding of the United Nations, unfortunately, "Paul Joseph Goebbels" school of propaganda, and his well-known slogan: "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it", is still an doctrine for many representatives of Western governments.

This is evident in its darkest form in the allegations propagated by the representatives of many Western governments,  in this Council, in the sense that the unilateral coercive measures- they illegally and illegitimately impose against my country, Syria - “do not target the Syrian people” and that they “make great efforts to ensure the provision of humanitarian and medical exemptions from these measures and to provide assistance to the Syrians”, and that the “regime” is the one that deprive Syrians from receiving treatment for Covid-19. The literature of lying is a specialty that is unique to Western culture, and we mention here, for example, but not limited to, the famous character of the lying baron Münchenhausen in German literature. Although the word literature is not proper for lying, we must note that the representatives of Western governments in the Council have succeeded in institutionalizing lying and making it a method for their misleading and sabotaging policies.

 I say it frankly, our diplomacy and belief in openness and dialogue make our words short and incapable of describing such overt lies. Every single Syrian at every second….every minute… and every hour suffers the catastrophic consequences of your inhumane coercive measures that target all aspects of his daily life and limit the ability of the Syrian state's institutions and their humanitarian partners to provide basic services and support to all Syrians and to improve the humanitarian and living conditions.

Mr. President.

Targeting the Syrian people with economic terrorism is not new. It stems from the American administrations narrow vision based on sponsoring and serving Israeli interests exclusively at the expense of the stability and security of our entire region and the blood of its people.

As a matter of fact, since 1978, successive American administrations have been imposing coercive measures on the Syrian economy and its vital sectors, such as civil aviation, oil, energy, telecommunications, technology, banking, import and export, including the import and manufacture of food, medicine and basic medical equipment. These measures aimed at discouraging us from our positions against the policies of domination and occupation. With such behavior, successive US administrations have made a mockery of all United Nations relevant documents and resolutions that affirm the illegality of these unilateral coercive measures and their violations of international law, the United Nations Charter, and human rights instruments.

However, the unilateral coercive measures imposed against my country have been tightened over the past years, especially during the tenure of the current administration, leading to the so-called "Caesar Act". They aim at overthrowing the Syrian state, undermining its national choices, and achieving what the hostile governments were unable to achieve politically and militarily by investing in terrorism and unilateral and sometimes trilateral acts of aggression. This was confirmed by the repeated public statements of "James Jeffrey" himself. Yesterday, we all heard President Trump confirming that his administration was planning to assassinate the President of the Syrian Arab Republic. This proves the level to which this administration's reckless political thinking and behavior had descended.

Today, all Syrians suffer from a wide range of coercive measures targeting every aspect of their life. Unfortunately, the United Nations and OCHA ignore our repeated requests that were confirmed in the official letter of complaint that I sent on behalf of my government to His Excellency the Secretary-General and the President of the Security Council on May 31st, 2020, in which we requested the General Secretariat to turn its words into action and submit a report on the disastrous effects of these measures on the lives of Syrians. We did not receive any response to this request - that we sent four months ago- even though we have sent several subsequent letters to confirm it. We, here thank and appreciate the request of many member states in this Council that echoed our request and tried to refer to it during negotiations prior to adopting resolution 2533.

Mr. President,

OCHA has provided you with / 68 / written reports and hundreds of briefings on the humanitarian situation in my country. Reports in which neither Mr. Lowcock nor his predecessors Stephen O'Brien and Valerie Amos, coincidently all British, dared to speak about the need to put an end to the coercive measures imposed against my country. Even when the Secretary-General and his special envoy to Syria, Mr. Pederson, called for the lifting of the coercive measures to serve the efforts aimed at addressing the Covid-19 pandemic, that call was echoed timidly and weakly by OCHA representatives, while Western governments tried to cover up these calls and divert attention from them. This was highlighted in the related negotiations of many unadopted draft resolutions and statements, due to the western stances, in both the General Assembly and the Security Council.

The endeavor of some Western governments to cover up the effects of their economic terrorism will not succeed. Realities on the ground do not need satellites, telescopes, microscopes, or even fact-finding missions to inspect or verify. How many Syrian children have been deprived of heating in their homes or schools due to the unilateral sanctions and the looting of the oil by the American occupation and its agent separatist militias? Another reason for depriving Syrians of heating is piracy and ship interception operations carried out by some governments without permission from the Security Council to prevent us from importing fuel?

How many patients or newborns were harmed or even died as a result of power cuts to the incubators or surgery rooms of some hospitals and health centers, or as a result of the ban on importing basic medical equipment and supplies such as surgical sutures, anticoagulants, empty plastic blood bags in addition to medical devices, MRIs, radiography, and other?

No matter how many statements on the alleged humanitarian concern are repeated, they can never cover the catastrophic impacts of the coercive unilateral measures that aim at suffocating Syrian citizens, exerting more pressure on the Syrian government, obstructing the reconstruction process, and the return of the displaced.

Of course, many representatives of the American administration will be happy to hear us complain about the inhuman effects of their measures, and they will consider this a success, because such crimes are business as usual for them. It is well known how their coercive measures claimed the lives of about a million Iraqi children in the 1990s, and this crime passed with impunity and without the establishment of any investigation committees or accountability mechanisms.

Mr. President,

The Syrian Arab Republic stresses the need to end the Turkish occupation of the territories it occupies in the north and northwest of my country, and the necessity to put an end to the crimes of the Erdogan terrorism-sponsoring regime, which are the major cause of the deterioration of the humanitarian situation of Syrians. These crimes included killing, destruction, displacement, demographic change, utilizing the suffering of the displaced, looting of  antiquities, factories and agricultural crops, organ trafficking, and the use of drinking water as a weapon against civilians, in addition to providing a lifeline for terrorist groups and a resource for their arsenal of arms, ammunition, and transnational terrorists.

My country reaffirms the need to end the American occupation of northeastern Syria and the Al-Tanf area. It also stresses the responsibility of the American occupation, its allies, agent separatist militias, and terrorist groups for prolonging the suffering in Al- Haul and Al- Rukban camps. This is because the American occupation has hindered and continues to hinder the return of the rest of the residents of Al-Rukban camp and the dismantling of this camp. Some European governments have also refused to recover their nationals from the transnational terrorists and their families from Al- Haul camp as well.

In conclusion, Mr. President, I would like to draw your attention to the report recently published by the British Guardian newspaper, citing research centers and academics in the United States. This report indicates that since 2001, the United States, under its so-called "The War on Terror", has displaced 37 million people from countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Yemen, and others. So, who is creating crises in this case? And how can the Security Council maintain international peace and security while the Western Permanent Members make themselves an opponent and a judge at the same time?

I thank you Mr. President.