“Brave” Assad fled to Putin. Where will Putin flee?
This year’s Human Rights Day is accompanied by horrific photographs of Syrian prisons and torture chambers that were opened after Assad fled. People were humiliated there for years. Men and women. They were beaten, tortured, raped. Thousands and thousands of people passed through this factory of violence.
The Assad regime has been sustained solely by violence for decades. And that is exactly what all the regimes that Putin supports are. We have seen the same prisons, torture chambers, unspeakable violence, humiliation, beatings, torture, rape and other crimes on our territory in every settlement that was occupied by the Russian invaders.
Russia is a prison state that can hold on to foreign, stolen land only thanks to the prisons and torture chambers that it places there.
Since the beginning of the Russian occupation, tanks have always been followed by repression and torture. We first saw this on our land in Crimea in 2014, when the Russian occupation led to the repression of the indigenous people, the largest Muslim community in Ukraine - the Crimean Tatars, as well as journalists and political figures. Then Russia continued its horrific human rights violations in the occupied Donbas, including the infamous Izolyatsia prison.
Since February 2022, Russia has expanded these practices to all other occupied territories. The atrocities have increased in scale and brutality.
That is why we, Ukrainians, are so moved when we see Syrians emerging from Assad’s prisons and torture chambers.
Assad and Putin are not just vassals and overlords. They are accomplices in violence. Dictators like Assad cannot survive without dictators like Putin. And Putin will seek revenge for Assad’s fall.
That is why we need unity and strength to confront regimes that sow only humiliation and leave behind only suffering, pain and ruin. By helping Ukraine fight against the Russian dictatorship, the international community is helping many other regions of the world restore security and achieve protection from violence.
There must be punishment for terrible atrocities and human rights violations. In reality, only Putin and Assad deserve to be in prison, not the innocent people they have been imprisoning for years.