Baladi News – (Omar al-Hassan)
After completely besieging the liberated parts of the city of Aleppo, Russia declared its plan of opening safe passages for civilians to leave towards the regime-controlled areas. The Syrian regime, under Russian instructions, threw maps of the four passages specified for civilians along with directions as to how to cross to the other part of the city.
Despite the statements provided by a number of western politicians and UN officials, which indicated that such a plan would fail, the Russians confirmed that is likely to succeed.
Even Staffan de Mistura, the UN special envoy to Syria, stated that Russia and the Syrian regime should entrust the United Nations with the management of such passages, because this is its specialization. He added that a ceasefire must be enforced, because no one would cross under battles and bombardments.
In their turn, the rebels emphasized that no safe passages exist at all, adding videos that demonstrate that the proclaimed passages are actually battle lines where crossing is impossible. Also, a statement issued by the civil defense on Sunday documented the death of a civilian while trying to leave towards Salaheddin neighborhood. The poor civilian was unlucky enough to believe the lie of the regime, and got shot at by a Syrian regime sniper while heading towards one of the proclaimed passages.
300 Thousands Besieged in Aleppo
The way the western media dealt with the plan was too biased towards Assad’s regime. Several websites of significant media agencies indicated that families started to leave the blockaded districts of the city based on videos broadcasted by Syrian regime media sources. These agencies adopted the Syrian regime story as if it had been a trusted source of information, and turned Bashar al-Assad, the killer, into “Mr. President”.
It is noteworthy that several western media agencies, including CNN, FRANCE 24, BBC, Reuters, and dozens others took the regime story for granted, showing the same pictures and videos published by the Syrian regime news agency, SANA, of 169 civilians escaping towards the regime areas as well as 70 armed men laying down their arms and surrendering themselves to the Syrian Army. On the other hand, these agencies turned a blind eye to at least 300 thousand civilians still trapped inside the eastern parts of the city.
No single media agency of those took the trouble of obtaining the news professionally, verifying it, or even asking the opposition about the departure of civilians and the opening of safe passages, especially that the faces of all the armed men shown in the regime footages were masked in order not to recognize them. Meanwhile, rebels and journalists inside the liberated parts of Aleppo demonstrate that those people were brought from the regime-allied neighborhoods in order to fake such a story.
Human Shields
Other less famous websites went too far by indicating that armed men in the besieged parts of the city were denying people from leaving and using them as human shields, although the same websites cited the Syrian regime story about the opening of safe passages and the departure of civilians through them.