Member of Parliament - comparable to rats

Ive kicked off a little charity auction - not much but here if you fancy a bid or just laying out £4 for some dismal brochures

Can you please state your connection/interest

Edit: Other than humanitarian interest. 

I can highly recommend a documentary called 'A Syrian Love Story' - if the daughter uttering the words 'those days were beautiful' doesn't break your heart then the rest of the documentary probably will.  I don't know how to embed a video from the BBC iPlayer website but if you're in the UK you can watch it online here for the next 21 days:

Many people talk about refugees but few really listen to them. Let's change that.

Here are six key results from the first ever survey of Syrian refugees in Europe who've made the dangerous journey to safety. We're proud to have cooperated in this study across five German cities supported by the Social Science Center in Berlin.
1. Most Syrians are fleeing from Assad, not Isis

Contrary to what you might read in the papers, it’s not the media-grabbing brutality of Isis that most people are fleeing from. It’s the much larger scale, state-organised violence of the Assad regime that is driving most people from their homes.

70% are fleeing the violence of the Assad regime and its allies (32% Isis, 18% Free Syrian Army, 17% Al Nusra, 8% Kurdish forces).
2. Most fear arrest or kidnap by the Assad regime

All armed groups have been involved in detention and disappearances in Syria, but none to the extent of Bashar al-Assad’s government, as thousands of leaked images of torture in state prison prove. [1]

86% say kidnapping or arrest was a threat to their personal safety. 77% of them fear it from the Assad regime, 42% Isis, 18% Al Nusra, 13% Free Syrian Army and 8% Kurdish forces.
3. Nearly all Syrians want to go home

It might seem that the people struggling in boats across perilous waters or jumping over barbed wire fences really want to be in Europe. But they don’t. Syrians want to go home to the country they know and love. The problem is with the violence raging they can’t.

Only 8% said they’d want to stay in Europe indefinitely
4. Assad needs to go for Syrians to return home

While Russia and others are asking countries to unite with Assad to fight Isis, it’s important to note that the majority of Syrian refugees will not go back while he remains in power. Syria needs peace and an end to dictatorship.

52% said that Bashar al-Assad would need to leave power before they would return home
5. Stopping the barrel bombs would help more stay in Syria. Much more than increased aid

The vast majority of refugees said they feared Assad’s barrel bombs – the improvised metal barrels packed with explosive and scrap metal that government helicopters drop from miles up in the sky onto civilian neighbourhoods.

These barrel bombs and other aerial attacks are the number one killer of civilians in Syria – the barrels alone have killed more than 2,000 children since the UN banned them in 2014. They routinely destroy hospitals, schools and homes.

Syrians living under the barrel bombs find it difficult to forget the terror, even once they have fled to safety.

To stop the refugees pouring over Syria’s borders we have to stop the bombs. More aid isn’t the answer.

73% said barrel bombs were a threat to their personal safety. 58% said a no-fly zone would help more stay in Syria, only 24% said the same for increased aid.
6. The cause of today’s situation is Assad’s military response to peaceful demonstrations

So much has changed in the last four and a half years in Syria yet still an overwhelming majority of Syrian refugees hold Bashar al-Assad responsible for today’s events. According to most of those surveyed, Assad’s decision to use military force against peaceful protesters demanding freedom and dignity in 2011 is the cause of today’s violence.

79% said it was the Bashar al-Assad’s military response to the demonstrations that led most to the situation today.
What should Europe do?

To reduce the number of Syrian refugees to Europe and to help create the conditions for their return, European politicians should:

1. Enforce a stop to the bombs. There are various initiatives from no-fly zones, no-bombing zones and safe zones which while all different in their implementation, would prevent the biggest killer of civilians in Syria today: Bashar al-Assad’s aerial attacks and barrel bombs. Europe needs to get serious about stopping the bombs.

2. Push for a peaceful transition of power away from Assad. There is no military solution to the conflict and there is international agreement that a transition to a new government is the only way to end the violence. The longer that takes, the more people will be driven from their homes.

--

It goes without saying that Europe should open its borders to those fleeing war - that’s a human imperative.

However, European leaders need to realise that unless they do more to constrain the violence of the Assad regime and make more effort to stop the war, the waves of refugees will not stop. The UN has predicted another million people will be displaced in Syria before Christmas and that was before Russia joined in the fighting.

To solve the refugee crisis, we have to stop the Syria crisis.

Please share the results of this important survey with your family and friends. Only by listening to those fleeing the conflict can we hope to better understand how to end it.



Thank you.

PS full results of the survey and methodology are available at this page: diary.thesyriacampaign.org/what-refugees-think/

This drone footage was shot over the city of Homs in western Syria, which until towards the end of last year was besieged by al-Assad's forces.  The city was home to around 1 million people and although you don't see any of them in the footage it's a sobering reminder of what's happened to the hopes and dreams and lives of all the civilians that lived there:

The peace talks begin this Friday, and the invites have gone out according to the UN on bbc website. It's going to be a difficult one but needs to be done.

Some sobering statistics on a bbc report this afternoon.
250,000 Syrians killed
1,000,000 Syrians injured.
11,000,000 Syrians made homeless.
4,000,000 Syrians have fled.
Dreadful.

Another year has passed and things are only getting worse for the people of Syria

On the fifth anniversary of the revolution, one cannot help but reflect on what we have survived. Our collective Syrian lives, no matter what you believe in, the people or the propaganda, are split forever into before and after the revolution.

It seems that there is nothing in the world imaginable, nothing, that we have not witnessed or experienced. From the most evil and inhumane to the most courageous and generous acts. Sorrow and pain and horror and despair and grief and hope and resilience and compassion and faith and love. We have felt it all and more. Often at the same time.

We have all become different people after the revolution. Our choices created paths that branched into directions we never expected. For some, these paths grew and expanded to create bonds with people and places in ways we also never expected. But others froze in place, also by choice, and watched their ancient worlds and beliefs vanish right before their eyes. Strangers became family, families unravelled, and nothing was the same again.

We have all redefined what home was and is, no matter where we settled and resettled. I suspect, like everyone who has lost something that can never be recovered again except in frail memory, we will never stop redefining home. That is our destiny.

We will always live with regret and conviction battling within us. To never be able to let that raging war rest, is also our curse. Because the burden of truth is too painful to carry all the time.

Last year in Turkey, a bright young man in high school named Ali - who had missed many months of school at a time on his journey of displacement - told me, “Four years for you is nothing, four years for us is a lifetime.” His profound words have lingered in my mind for many months. Over the last few days of reflection, they finally sunk in and I realised he was wrong.

Five years for us is a lifetime too.

Thank you to for being part of the The Syria Campaign community and standing in solidarity with Syrians.

Lina Sergie Attar

Co-Founder of Karam Foundation, Architect, Writer and Board Member of The Syria Campaign. Lina has written about the revolution since the start of the uprising.

PS. Anna from The Syria Campaign here. We’ve created a short video telling the story of the peaceful revolution in Syria. Share it today and remind your friends how this all started.
www.facebook.com/TheSyriaCampaign/videos/999554046803275/

It's not my intention to add an off topic, but you might like to check Ai WeiWei's profile on IG. Another great artist that has been involved in the cause since the early days.

I am Dr Hatem, the director of the Children’s Hospital in Aleppo.

Last night, 27 staff and patients were killed in an airstrike on Al Quds Hospital nearby. My friend Dr Muhammad Waseem Maaz, the city’s most qualified paediatrician, was killed in the attack. He used to work at our Children’s Hospital during the day and then he’d go to Al Quds Hospital to attend to emergencies overnight.

Dr Maaz and I used to spend six hours a day together. He was friendly, kind and he used to joke a lot with the whole staff. He was the loveliest doctor in our hospital.

I’m in Turkey now, and he was supposed to visit his family here after I returned to Aleppo. He hadn’t seen them in four months.

Dr Maaz stayed in Aleppo, the most dangerous city in the world, because of his devotion to his patients. Hospitals are often targeted by government and Russian air forces.

Days before Dr Maaz’s life was taken, an airstrike hit only 200 metres away from our hospital. When the bombing intensifies, the medical staff run down to the ground floor of the hospital carrying the babies’ incubators in order to protect them.

Like so many others, Dr Maaz was killed for saving lives. Today we remember Dr Maaz’s humanity and his bravery.

Please share his story so others may know what medics in Aleppo and across Syria are facing.
www.facebook.com/TheSyriaCampaign/photos/a.608812989210718.1073741828.607756062649744/1034460166645996/?type=3&theater&_fb_noscript=1

The situation today is critical - Aleppo may soon come under siege. We need the world to be watching.

Thank you for keeping us in your thoughts,

Dr Hatem

As a photographer with The Sunday Times in Syria, I personally witnessed the slaughter of civilians in Baba Amr. I witnessed the use of wide area battlefield weapons on a civilian population, in an area with no legitimate military targets.

I saw the blood and guts of men, women and children spilled onto the dirt of the city's rubble-filled streets. I have no doubts that the rockets and artillery shells that fell on and shredded the children of Homs were fired by the Assad regime. We all witnessed true horrors in Homs and it’s the duty of all of us who survived never to be silenced.

For anyone following events in Syria over the past five years, there has been precious little, if any, reason for cheer. However, the filing of charges this weekend against the Syrian state in the US court by Cat Colvin, sister of my fallen colleague Marie Colvin, is hopefully the first step on the long road to justice for untold millions of Syrians.[1]

The charges name all of the main protagonists in a state-sponsored conspiracy to silence, capture and kill both Syrian and foreign journalists. Once the regime decided to systematically torture, starve and murder its own citizens, anybody shining a light into the darkness had to be removed.

It is the hope of everyone involved in the filing of these charges that we can now begin to refocus the spotlight back onto those responsible for the destruction of Syria.

The charges give us a very clear and accurate tool which we should use as a reminder: these are not people we can or should do business with. The fact that the named regime members are not ISIS does not mean the people of Syria should endure their presence in any transitional or permanent peace deal.

Foreign governments, diplomats and politicians should carefully examine the charges as a reminder of just what this regime has done, and perhaps more importantly, what it is capable of doing in the future.

The sheer time, effort and resources dedicated to the attack on the Baba Amr media centre, demonstrate only too well the regime’s fear of having anybody bear witness to its crimes.

With this in mind I can only offer my total respect and heartfelt thanks to the brave souls who took Marie and I on that treacherous journey into Syria. The dedication of Ali, Rami and all the guys in the media centre, who not only helped us report on the horrors unfolding in Homs, but also helped us survive the withering bombardment we all lived through. Their bravery was matched only by their dedication to report to the world the unfolding horrors we all witnessed in Homs at that time.

Please take a few minutes to watch and share this powerful short film with Syrian journalist Rami Jarrah talking about the killing of Marie and the ongoing targeting of Syrian journalists.

www.facebook.com/TheSyriaCampaign/videos/1088397301252282/?_fb_noscript=1


Thank you all,

Paul Conroy