Assad’s air force just murdered three more White Helmets rescue volunteers

• The UK can and should act to end Assad’s chemical, air, and artillery attacks against civilians.

• The UK can and should deliver aid to besieged areas using airdrops.

Assad’s air force just murdered three more White Helmets rescue volunteers

Mohammed Alaya, Mohamed Haymour, and Ahmad Kaeika; three White Helmets rescue volunteers were deliberately killed today when Assad’s air force targeted Syria Civil Defence in Douma, a neighbourhood in the besieged Eastern Ghouta suburbs of Damascus.

What’s happening in East Ghouta

Eastern Ghouta was one of the areas targeted by Assad’s August 2013 Sarin nerve agent attacks which killed between 1,200 and 1,700 people.

Since then, Eastern Ghouta has been under siege by the Assad regime.  Around 400,000 people have lived under air and artillery attacks, the blocking of food and medical aid, the blocking of medical evacuations, as well as an end to free movement and the blocking of all normal commercial traffic.

From late 2014, smuggling tunnels connected East Ghouta to opposition-held neighbourhoods Qaboun and Barzeh, but these areas fell to regime forces in early 2017. Today, bread in East Ghouta costs 11 times more than in nearby Damascus.

In October, shocking images of malnourished children emerged. Obeida, an infant, died on 21st October. Sahar, a girl 34 days old, died on 22nd October, due to an intestinal infection and related acute malnutrition. Three year old Mohammad Abd al-Salem died on 27th October.

UNICEF estimate more than 1,100 children are suffering from acute malnutrition.

The BBC, the conspiracy theorist, and the Shadow Foreign Secretary

By Clara Connolly

Did Panorama fake an air attack on schoolchildren in Syria?

The BBC Panorama documentary ‘Saving Syria’s Children’ was first shown on 30th September 2013. Travelling with British doctors inside Syria, BBC Panorama’s journalists witnessed first-hand the effects of an August 2013 Assad regime incendiary attack on a school in Aleppo province.

Now Emily Thornberry, Shadow Foreign Secretary, has raised a complaint about the programme to the BBC on behalf of a constituent, one Robert Stuart.

Ever since it was first broadcast the BBC’s report has been under attack by supporters of the Assad regime, none more tenacious than the same Robert Stuart, who has been obsessing about this one programme for four years on a blog hyped by an RT programme in 2015 as a ‘massive public investigation which made some extremely disturbing findings.’

Speaking to an audience of 500 in central London on 19th October at an event held by Frome Stop War, an organisation noted for its pro Assad stance and not recognised by Stop the War Coalition, Robert Stuart baldly asserted that the 2013 air attack and its effects, as shown in the BBC programme, were fabricated. His presentation was introduced as a ‘master class in analysis.’

At a time of widespread cynicism about the mainstream media (some of it deserved) even the most preposterous conspiracy theory (as this is) can be amplified by dubious but effective sources—especially on social media—into something that becomes accepted as truth, simply because of its frequent repetition.

Syrian activists and humanitarians, especially when attempting to expose the crimes of Assad, have been among the main targets of this vicious war on the facts. Robert Stuart’s attack is not just on the BBC—it is also yet another heartless smear on humanitarians, this time on doctors doing an impossibly dangerous job in a conflict zone.