General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: A reminder to think before you speak - Israel and Palestine edition [View all]sufrommich
(22,871 posts)when one considers the absolute silence from the international community regarding Syria.
Turning our backs on Syrian atrocities:
A photographer in the criminal and forensics department of the Syrian military police recently told a group at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, My job on a daily basis was just regular accidents, burnings, drownings, routine things. In late 2011, as the Syrian uprising intensified, his routine changed. The photographer was sent to the morgue at a military hospital to document the bodies of prisoners arriving from 24 regime intelligence branches and military units. Soon 50 to 60 mutilated, emaciated corpses were coming each day so many they were kept in storage rooms and parking lots. Some victims were brought alive to the morgue and killed, he recalled.
Michael Gerson is a nationally syndicated columnist who appears twice weekly in The Post. View Archive
He was involved in archiving the pictures of corpses taken by all the military photographers. Pictures of children, he said, pictures of the elderly, pictures of women. I saw pictures of my own neighbors, from my own village. They were images not of terrorists but of a broad, populist movement.
The photographer decided he could no longer take part. But when he approached the opposition to defect, he was urged to stay, continue his work and smuggle out the archive on thumb drives. The result is 55,000 high-resolution photographs taken of more than 11,000 victims between September 2011 and August 2013. The corpses, variously, bear marks from being chained; their eyes have been gouged; there are dark spots left by electric shocks; most are gaunt from starvation. The pictures cant be generally distributed, because Syrians might recognize family members they still think are alive.
The corpses in the photos are carefully identified by three numbers: their own identification number, the number of their medical pathology report and the number of the intelligence unit where they died. Why would the Syrian regime keep such meticulous records? The photographer, who goes for security reasons by the name Caesar, describes it as part of a bureaucratic routine in which the higher-ups got proof their orders were carried out. It is also the type of practice witness Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union employed by a government completely unconcerned with eventual accountability, because it believes it will win. As the Syrian regime assaults Aleppo, the last major city contested by the rebels, this belief is not unreasonable.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/michael-gerson-turning-our-backs-on-syrian-atrocities/2014/07/31/3668acd2-1816-11e4-85b6-c1451e622637_story.html
The world yawns with absolute indifference.