WASHINGTON D.C.— On Sunday, Arab nations adopted a decision to readmit Syria into the Arab League more than a decade after it was suspended following a bloody crackdown on the peaceful pro-democracy revolution in 2011. The Syrian Emergency Task Force (SETF) condemns this decision in the strongest possible terms and urges the Arab League to reconsider its stance.
The decision to readmit Syria back into the Arab League is profoundly disappointing and sends a message that the League is willing to overlook the atrocities committed by the Assad regime.
Syria’s Arab League membership was revoked following Dictator Bashar Al-Assad’s brutal crackdown on protesters in March 2011. Since then, nearly half a million people have been killed, according to conservative estimates, and over half of Syria’s population has been displaced, with more than 6.9 million displaced inside the country. In addition, around 130,000 people remain arbitrarily detained or missing simply for speaking the words of freedom.
Key eyewitnesses, such as “Caesar,” “The Gravedigger,” and “The Bulldozer Driver,” have shed light on Assad’s atrocities, despite the immense danger to their safety. Caesar smuggled over 55,000 photos of women, elderly, and children tortured and killed by the Assad regime inside its torture dungeons. The Gravedigger and The Bulldozer Driver have testified to harrowing accounts of mass graves, revealing the horrifying extent of the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the Assad regime and its allies Russia and Iran.
“Every week, twice a week, three trailer trucks arrived, packed with 300 to 600 bodies of victims of torture, starvation, and execution from military hospitals and intelligence branches around Damascus. Twice a week, we received three or four pickup trucks with 30 to 40 bodies, still warm, of civilians that had been executed in Saydnaya Prison,” The Gravedigger testified before the US Congress in April.