The malaymail online
Propaganda is the weapon of terror in Syria, where its ordinary citizens live in daily confusion and fear of both the Islamic State (IS) militants and the government under President Bashar al-Assad.
Mouaz Moustafa, executive director of the US-based humanitarian and legal support group Syrian Emergency Task Force (SETF),said the IS were only posing as saviours from the al-Assad regime that is tainted with strong claims of torture and murder of civilians.
“ISIS, the terrorists, use these horrible crimes as propaganda, so they can say ‘Oh look the world doesn’t care about Syria, but we somehow care’,” Mouaz said today at a one-day photo exhibition here showcasing methodical torture and death under the al-Assad regime.
“But the fact is IS in Syria, they fight us, they don’t go and fight the regime. Go and look on YouTube, every battle is ISIS fighting the Syrian opposition, the same people that the regime is killing,” he added, referring to the global terror network’s other moniker.
“And so unfortunately these horrendous crimes are used as propaganda by terrorists that are themselves fighting the Syrian people. So the Syrian people are now having to fight against the ISIS, against the regime.”
Mouaz cited his non-profit organisation—which also provides humanitarian and legal support to Syrians—as an example of the dangers faced by Syrian citizens.
The SETF lost four of its workers when two persons aged 23 and 24 were taken by the Assad regime and tortured to death, while the other two aged 24 and 29 were beheaded by the IS for merely seeking for a democratic country, he said.
“And ISIS are not even Syrians. They come from abroad,” he said.
He was responding to a comment on how some individuals would go to Syria and join the IS militant group upon seeing the horrors experienced by the Syrian citizens, effectively doing the “wrong thing” for the right reasons instead of doing humanitarian work.
PKR MP Nurul Izzah Anwar, who was also present, highlighted the importance of tackling the root cause of terrorism in Syria by acting against the Syrian government’s alleged “genocide” of its civilians.
“When you talk about the issue of ISIS, the issue of terrorism, I would like to reiterate that if you allow genocide to continue—it’s been the seventh year—definitely you will leave the vacuum wide open for other bad terrible actors to leverage and make full use of the situation.
“So in order to stem the rising tide of terrorism, we must declare any harmful actions, atrocities by the Assad regime has to be tackled,” she said, having urged the Malaysian government to condemn the Assad regime’s actions and form a bipartisan parliamentary committee on Syria.
Local police have nabbed 234 Malaysians suspected of links to the IS and had identified 95 Malaysians who have gone to join the fight in Syria as of February 22.
At that time, 30 of the 95 had died there while another eight were arrested upon return to Malaysia, the Home Ministry said.
SETF said over 500,000 Syrians have lost their lives since the Syrian conflict started seven years ago in 2011, with 14 million or more than half of Syria’s 23 million-strong population displaced from their homes and becoming refugees.
Today’s photo exhibition titled Caesar’s Photos: Inside Syria’s Secret Prisons featured a select 19 out of 55,000 smuggled photos of Syrians tortured to death during 2011-2013 inside Syrian government facilities.
The one-day exhibition is also the first SETF has held in Asia Pacific. The exhibition will next be shown in Turkey at the request of the Turkish government, in Spain and in Denmark.
Mouaz said SETF will work towards holding a longer exhibition here in future.
“Everyone must see these photographs because these photographs are not in the past, they are something that are happening now,” Mouaz said.