On 8 December, Syria marked the first anniversary of its liberation from the regime of Bashar al-Assad. A year ago, rebels entered Damascus, bringing an end to an authoritarian system that had held the country in an iron grip for two decades through repression and the backing of Moscow and Tehran.
A Ukrainian civil society delegation arrived in Syria in recent days. The trip was intended to show solidarity with a country that has suffered crimes by Russia similar to those committed against Ukraine. This was reported by the Center for Civil Liberties on its Facebook page.
The delegation included Oleksandra Matviichuk, head of the Center for Civil Liberties; Maksym Butkevych, an expert at the same organisation and a former prisoner of war; Crimean Tatar activist Leniie Umerova, who has also been through imprisonment; and journalist Nataliya Gumenyuk, head of the Public Interest Journalism Lab.
The Ukrainians visited Sednaya prison — the place where the regime held and tortured tens of thousands of people for years. They inspected mass grave sites and the destroyed districts of the capital, and spoke with survivors of the prisons and with victims of air bombardments and chemical attacks. They also met representatives of the new Syrian authorities and the National Commission for Transitional Justice.
“I saw another dimension of evil, and also a nation that refused to be broken,” Oleksandra Matviichuk said of her impressions. In her words, the scale of destruction cannot be conveyed by a photograph: entire districts have been wiped off the face of the earth by Russian aircraft.
She made particular mention of the city of Douma. There, Russian forces promised civilians a safe corridor for evacuation, but used chemical weapons instead. After the attack, people in protective suits arrived at the site and destroyed the evidence.
I saw another dimension of evil, and also a nation that refused to be broken.
“That is why Syrians hate Russia. And we understand where the Russians honed their skills in striking civilian populations,” Matviichuk concluded.
The Ukrainian delegation’s visit to Syria took place against a backdrop of growing awareness of the shared experience of the two countries — both have faced Russian aggression and systematic crimes against civilians.
Photos: Natalka Gumenyuk and Oleksandra Matviichuk
