An article published by the Guardian stated that eastern Ghouta is turning into Syria’s Srebrenica. The report says that the population there is not being protected following the failure of negotiations for peaceful resolution in late 2017. Radio Sputnik spoke with activist and independent investigative journalist Vanessa Beeley in an interview.
Sputnik: Mass media reports that the US and its allies are attempting to protect the civilians in Eastern Ghouta- is this really the case?
Vanessa Beeley: What needs to be made very clear and I think perhaps needs clarifying for your audience because we are hearing as usual the sensationalist journalism from NATO aligned corporate media in the West describing the Syrian Arab Army’s legitimate military campaign against terrorist factions led, again, by al-Qaeda affiliated factions that have occupied the areas, the eastern suburbs of Damascus, since 2013.
Basically, the atrocities that those media outlets are denying are the almost daily rain down of mortars and projectiles, missiles, explosive bullets, the suicide car bomb attacks against Syrian civilians in densely populated residential areas of Damascus city, which also, by the way, is home now to a number of refugees from particularly eastern Ghouta but other areas from of the east such as [Dourbar and Durmur] and have been for many years because many of the civilians in those areas fled the terrorist occupation and invasion in 2013. Those same terrorist factions were raining mortars down upon predominantly school children, civilians and residents of Damascus city are also known to be abusing, starving, imprisoning, putting Syrian civilians into cages as human shields and holding them hostage.
While I was in Damascus, I was aware of projects being carried out by the Syrian government, the Syrian Red Crescent, the Russian humanitarian organizations and a number of other Syrian civil society organizations to consistently evacuate civilians from those areas, both hostages and those who were held as human shields.
Smoke rises from the rebel held besieged town of Hamoruryeh, eastern Ghouts, Feb 21, 2018. Click to enlarge
Those who needed medical treatment because they were not receiving medical treatment in those terrorist occupied areas, so you know I would ask anybody who is listening, if they are living in a city or a town and if the suburbs of that town are occupied by NATO member states- financed and armed terrorist factions who are slaughtering their own civilians on a daily basis, threatening to advance further into that town to carry out further sort of ethnic cleansing campaigns and pogroms, would they be resisting efforts by their government to liberate those areas or would they be encouraging their governments to run a military campaign to liberate those areas and to save a vast majority of civilians? It is a war, Jason.
This is an awful situation, but who has imposed this situation upon the Syrian people? It is not the Syrian government. It’s the NATO member states, their client states in Israel and Saudi Arabia and their various allies around the world.
Vanessa Beeley: I think what we are seeing here is a familiar war-mongering campaign by the NATO-aligned media, the state-aligned media in the West. One, to protect their assets, their state assets in the eastern suburbs, which as I said, are the militant factions that they are financing and arming.
We have to ask if these factions are starving, as they claim, where they are receiving the supplies to continue targeting civilians in Damascus city. Where are they receiving these ammunitions and missiles from? So I think this story, this comparison to Srebrenica genocide, this comparison to the Day of Judgment, to Armageddon, to apocalyptic events is simply another way of the Western media calling for war, calling to escalate the conflict, calling to protect their assets on the ground, which also includes the White Helmets, who we know to be affiliated with the al-Qaeda and are financed by the UK’s foreign office, primarily.
So I think it is to be expected. We saw it during the liberation of East Aleppo. We saw almost exactly the same rhetoric being propagated by the Western media. So I think it’s to be expected but we are at a dangerous pivotal point here and I think what is important is to maintain a cool head and also to bear in mind that majority of the civilians both in the occupied areas in the eastern suburbs and the huge majority in Damascus city will be a 100 percent behind their government, and behind their army and behind this liberation campaign and when that liberation is complete we will yet again be hearing the truth from the Syrian civilians that at the moment is being suppressed.
Sputnik: Many civilians have been killed by terrorists who attacked residential areas in Damascus, why hasn’t the Western media focused on that?
Vanessa Beeley: Simply because I don’t think it plays into their regime change narrative. It’s not supporting the narrative that they have run with for the last seven years, which has been effectively been a demonization of the Syrian government, the demonization of the elected President Bashar al-Assad, and the demonization of the Syrian Arab Army. The Syrian Arab Army belongs to the Syrian people and the Syrian people belong to the Syrian Arab Army. That has been the statement that was given to me by all the families inside Syria in my last four-week visit when I last spoke to many of the families of the martyrs from the Syrian Arab Army.
You know, I think it is simply protectionism as I said, of their entire campaign to effect regime change in Syria and to destabilize Syria as a hub for the region. So I really don’t think it’s surprising that we are seeing this hysteria from Western media but we are at a very dangerous pivotal point. Syria is fighting a number of very intense fronts in Idlib, Afrin, in the south where Israel is ramping up its military activity and its funding of the terrorist and military factions that are acting as custodial guardians for the Golan Heights. So I think we’re seeing an intensification of the military campaign and we’re seeing a reaction from Western governments and from their media.
Sputnik: The city has been occupied by terrorists for a number of years; we know that who were holding civilians as hostages, why is this information been ignored? Are there any other agendas that we need to be told about with this?
I think a couple of things that I would like to predict here. One is that we will see, and we have seen some evidence of that, I think Sputnik has also reported on that, there is a very high chance that the White Helmets are in particularly going to create false [flags] both in the eastern suburbs of Damascus and in Idlib.
We saw three trucks of chlorine entering Idlib I believe from Turkey, and there is evidence that there are false flags being planned. But I think another point needs to be made, I think US coalition and the Gulf States and Israel are worried what is going to be exposed and revealed when these areas are liberated, particularly Idlib and Ghouta, [Jarba, Duna etc.] the eastern suburbs of Damascus, because it’s very clear that somebody has been supplying the munitions and equipment to these terrorist factions.
Somebody has been managing these terrorist factions, and so my prediction would be that at some point we are going to see some destruction: either of warehouses, or strategic buildings, or strategic areas both in Idlib and in the eastern suburbs. Whether that would be blamed on the Syrian government or simply the US coalition will do what it always does, you know to intervene militarily on behalf of its proxies on the ground in Syria, I don’t know, but I think they are very worried about the liberation of these two areas because of what it’s going to expose about the entire psyop that’s been run by the US coalition since the beginning of this conflict.
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