The Syrian Islamic Council Announces a Historical Document holding the World Responsible for the Syrian Tragedy The Syrian Islamic Council announced yesterday morning, Wednesday, at a press conference held in the Turkish city of Istanbul, a historical document about the Syrian tragedy entitled “A Letter to the World’s Conscience,”. The Council has released, during the Conference held in the Wakf of the Turkish Humanitarian Relief Foundation, “IHH”, an appeal to the world’s conscience and to the international legal organizations to stop the systematic destruction and genocide in a country that is considered “the cradle of civilizations and messages in the world.” The Council accused in the document the global system of failing to “redress the oppressed” in Syria, and to protect their demand for freedoms and rights, describing the attitude of some countries as “collusion” with the Assad regime.

The Conference was attended by a group of the Board of Trustees of the Syrian Islamic Council, under the supervision of Sheikh Osama Rifai, President of the Council, his deputy Dr. Moaz Al- Knen, Dr. Abdul Karim Bakkar, Sheikh Fayez Al- Salah, Dr. Kherallah Taleb, Sheikh Abdullah Al-Othman, Sheikh Mamdouh Junaid and Dr. Mohamed Abu al-Khair Shukri, members of the Board of Trustees. The Conference was covered by correspondents from several Arab and Turkish channels like Al-Jazeera and Turkish TRT channels. Dr. Abdul Karim Bakkar read out the text of the document which dealt with the size of the humanitarian disaster faced by Syria for the fifth year, where the Assad regime kills daily, according to the documented reports 144 people, a quarter of which are women and children, while the number of missing exceeded 105 thousand people. With regards to the refugees catastrophe, the document showed that about 14 million refugees, 10 million of them are IDPs in Syria, have been displaced by the Assad regime, in light of the destruction of nearly 2.9 million homes, more than 2000 mosques, 40 Churches and the looting and destruction of about three thousand archaeological sites. The Council has noted in its document which was signed by all its components as well as by many of the revolutionary entities opposing Assad’s rule, to the deterioration of the economic situation of the Syrian people, the collapse of the currency and the decline in agricultural production after the regime had burned many of the lands and crops, in addition to sabotaging most factories and production plants. The document cited statistics about Assad’s bomb barrels dropped by random on civilians, which amounted during the last eight months to an average of 47 barrels per day, not to mention the murder of 1,500 people at one night with chemical weapon in Eastern and Western Ghouta, in Rural Damascus, mid-2013.

During the press conference, the signatories of the document stressed on the responsibility of the international community for the reality of the country, under the political “manipulation” of the opposition, and the prohibition of arming rebel forces with any qualitative weapon capable of protecting civilians, in light of the flow of weapons across several deals to the Assad regime during the past four years. The signatories noted that the world states overlooked all the international laws and conventions regarding the Syrian condition, in the light of the clear interference of Iran and the “sectarian militias”, and the change of the essence of the issue by turning it to a crisis of refugees and the growing phenomenon of “terrorism”. Regarding the economic sanctions formerly imposed by the international community on Assad regime, the signatories to the document pointed out that it was reflected on the livelihoods of the Syrian society without harming the interests of Assad and his allies. At the conclusion of the Conference, the signatories stressed on the necessity of stopping the massacres of the regime, for it is the only way to curb the flow of the refugees, as well as to stand in the face of Iranian interference and the process of the demographic change experienced by many Syrian cities. The Council called on world countries to fulfill their “stated commitments”, and to work seriously to maintain the unity of the Syrian territories. On the other hand, the document talked about ISIS, stressing that it is a “security creature to abort the revolution, which stands against the hopes and aspirations of the Syrian people, calling for confronting it by all means, and for fighting the Assad regime’s terrorism at the same time.
You can download the whole text of the document in English, Turkish and Arabic, or you can watch the conference video and the press release with the document text by clicking the links below:1- The press release with the document text