Reports started trickling out yesterday that a mass grave had been found in Dera’a. The regime initially denied it. Now, they go back and Makhlouf’s own newspaperacknowledges it though says that only five, not twenty four were buried there.
Seven bodies identified so far: five from one family, the Abu Zieds of Dera’a, Abd’l Razaq Abd’l Aziz, the father, and Samer, Samir, Sleiman and Muhammad, all children.
They kill children.
They bury them in unmarked graves.
They wipe out families.
All this country is full of sites where the bodies of more are buried. We have all heard in whispers that under that building or beneath that hill or pile of rubble, the martyrs lie.
We all know people who vanished and never came back. Sometimes someone saw them go. Sometimes no one did. Grabbed from home in the middle of the night or from the street.
Some come back; many do, it is true. They now brag of the thousands who allegedly turned themselves in and signed agreements to support this regime. Some of those have come back out.
How many new mass graves have they made? Are there more in Banias, in Latakia, Homs and Tel Khalikh? We know that they are killing and burying the dead so that their names will not be noticed, their absence left as though they have merely been disappeared.
And when they do, do they not realize that this is not the way forward? This is the way to the abyss’s edge. They claim they fear sectarian violence. And maybe they do.
But don’t they think that, when the graves are opened up and the bodies are given their names, people will remember who did the killing?
Don’t they think that when the names are known and whole families of one sect are slaughtered they will engender the very thing they say they fear?
This is not the way; this regime will fall. The only question is what comes after. None of us want a bloodletting. But what is done now will matter later on. If they live by massacre, they may get massacre. If they stop, there is yet a hope for a Syria free of violence.
We have made ourselves clear. We are willing to forget, if not forgive, many of the crimes of this regime … if they stop committing crimes.
They must stop, if not because it is what is right, but because it is what is best for the gravediggers themselves and their own families.
3 comments:
Amina..
This was reported on CNN last night -Anderson Cooper had some utube footage of the graves…the world is watching...
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We have made ourselves clear. We are willing to forget, if not forgive, many of the crimes of this regime … if they stop committing crimes.
They must stop, if not because it is what is right, but because it is what is best for the gravediggers themselves and their own families. "
Do you seriously believe the dictator gives two shits on the lives of the common folk?
Honor their stolen future with great acts in the days to come.
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