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Could President Assad have killed 13,000 People in Syria?
Appalling human rights violations are occurring within Syria's Saydnaya military prison.
If you needed anymore convincing that Trump's Muslim ban was a horrible idea from the get go.Then let this sink in, over 13,000 people have secretly been hanged in Syria's Saydnaya military prison and most of them have been civilians.
Over the past five years the prison would hang up to 50 inmates at a time, as confirmed by a new report from Amnesty international. Thanks to President Trump Syria was included in the Muslim ban, so those hoping to escape from these horrors and start a new life in the Land of Opportunity now can't.
What I described above sounds terrible, right? Well, it gets much worse I'm afraid. Most of the people hanged were only guilty of opposing the government, and in most cases they were only given a two-minute trial (without a lawyer). They usually had false confessions beaten out of them and sentences would be carried out immediately. With the bodies usually being left hanging for around 10-15 minutes. In the event that the noose didn't kill the victim, the guards would untie them and break their necks manually.
Prisoners held in the rooms above where the executions took place described having their sleep interrupted by the sound of people choking to death. The bodies would then be loaded onto trucks and dumped into mass graves.
But the inmates who aren't sentenced to die are still subjected to appalling conditions. Lack of food, water and medicine are commonplace, and the few who are actually released leave weighing less than half of what they did when they went in. The guards are also known to routinely beat prisoners, sometimes to death. Apparently they don't even bother to clean up the blood anymore.
Since the start of the Syrian conflict back in 2011, President Assad has never shied away from deliberately targeting civilians. He escalated the protests that would eventually lead to the war, by ordering his forces to fire upon protesters demanding that he step down. This lead to more protests which he also violently suppressed, this eventually lead to all out war.
Since the city of Aleppo was reclaimed from rebels back in December, Assad's forces were said to have killed eighty-two civilians in their homes. Between January to July 2015 he was responsible for killing 7,894 civilians. To make matter worse his government airstrikes have often been carried out on areas packed with non-military personal. In total it's estimated that around 95% of all civilians killed in Aleppo were killed by Assad's forces. It's clear that there's nothing he won't do to stay in control of the country that his family has ruled since 1971.
And speaking of having no regard for human life, thanks to President Trump's travel ban, the people subjected to these horrors won't be able to seek refuge in the United States. This is despite the fact that the USA was literally founded as a nation of immigrants, under the principal that the country would always offer sanctuary to those in need. The people of Syria should be accepted into the US with open arms.
