Good afternoon, everybody.
I am Ameenah Sawan, from Moadamiyeh al-Sham, a city in the eastern part of the Damascus suburbs. I am 23 years old. I left college in 2011 at the beginning of the revolution. I was a student at Damascus University, the department of translation.
My city was involved in the revolution from the very beginning. The regime tried to kill and end the revolution. They massacred many in my city, including a few executions. They slaughtered people, burned bodies, and did whatever you could imagine. That was going on with support from the Lebanese Hezbollah and the Iran Revolutionary Guards.
In November 2012, the Free Syrian Army liberated my city because we couldn't handle the fact that the regime was going to enter the city again and do another massacre in it. The regime started using the helicopter and the MiG airplane to shell the city with more shells because they couldn't enter it.
Tasneem Juma'a is a kid from Moadamiyeh and she is six years old. On January 2, 2013, she was sitting in her house with her family. They were really afraid but they didn't know that the airplanes they heard in the sky were going to hit their house, which had two floors. The MiG airplanes hit their place and ruined it. She lost her parents, her five sisters, and her brother, Mahmood.
People tried to take them out of the ruins, but the regime also hit the same place with ground-to-ground missiles and 35 people were killed. That included her family and the people who were trying to help. Then we witnessed many massacres because of the shelling.
The 4th division shelled Moadamiyeh and some part of the Damascus suburbs. It's a part of Moadamiyeh on a mountain and Moadamiyeh is on the hillside.
As Heba said, we were trying to do some psychosocial support activities for the kids in 2013 in some basements during the shelling. We were living under siege and we couldn't feed those kids. We thought we could sing with them and let them forget they were living under shelling and that they were hungry and afraid and missing their schools.
Every day whenever the kids in Moadamiyeh went to bed, they had innocent dreams maybe about a small piece of chocolate, maybe chefs, maybe teddy bears, maybe going on a trip peacefully with their family outside the siege.
On August 21, 2013, many kids of Moadamiyeh slept, dreaming as usual, but they didn't wake up because Bashar al-Assad hit my city with a chemical weapon. Eighty-two civilians were killed that day and 400 people were injured. That day I rushed with Heba to the field hospital and the situation was crazy. People were suffocating in the street, having spasms, rushing, and when we reached the field hospital, they were putting the dead bodies and the injured people on the floor on both sides of the street. They hosed their bodies with water. That day we witnessed the most severe shelling on our city.
The MiG airplane made 19 shots on the city. They hit the city with ground-to-ground missiles and hundreds of mortar shells. They were trying to break in at all the entrances. Maybe they thought since they hit us with a chemical weapon and we were now busy with the dead people and injured people and many of the people who were trying to help were dizzy, that they could enter the city and slaughter the others and in the revolution in Moadamiyeh, but with God's mercy, they couldn't.
At 11 a.m. many of the medical staff in the field hospital—it's a 300-metre basement, not a hospital. It's just a place where you are trying to help people. You can't even call it a hospital. One of the doctors was feeling dizzy. I was standing next to him. He was holding a baby. That baby was about 10 months old. He said, “Ameenah, hold this baby.” I took the baby and rushed around the room trying to wake him up and do CPR on him.
We couldn't find anything to help the people injured by sarin gas, except snuggling them in blankets, putting some vinegar on their noses, trying to do CPR, and washing their bodies and faces with water. That's it. I rushed to the room, and tried to do CPR on that kid, but he didn't respond. I tried to put some vinegar on his nose. Then he rushed into the room, and said, “Ameenah, what are your doing? That kid is already dead.” I said, “We have to try. We have to do something.” He said, “All his family was killed. Why do you want to wake him up? He went to a better place where he could find justice. He went with his family”.
That day we lost touch with my brother's family: my brother, his wife, and their three kids. In the middle of the day we found out they were fine. They were hidden in some basement on the next street. I was really afraid when I saw their neighbours coming with dead people and injured people.
Also, the field hospital was full of dead people, so we had to move some of them to the house next door. We moved 43 dead people to that house. They were already dead. That wasn't enough for the regime, so it hit that place with five mortar shells. They were already dead. It thought the Syrian people didn't even deserve a decent death so it killed them twice.
Seven days later, the same brother who survived the chemical attack with his family was planting to defeat the siege, planting some eggplant, lettuce, just some little things. You can't even feed yourself. You are feeling hungry.
My brother and his wife were dreamers. They had dreams. At that moment my brother was standing with his wife while his three kids were playing around, and a mortar shell fell on the building in front of them. The shrapnel killed my brother, his wife, and his son Ahmed, who was seven years old. They had survived the chemical attack day through a miracle.
Assad has all kinds of weapons. If he couldn't kill us with this weapon, he could kill us with the other weapon. The international world was asking us if we felt safe when they told us Assad was handling chemical weapons. I said no, because you see, one example is my brother and his family, but we have hundreds and thousands of examples. Our problem is not totally with the chemical weapons.
I don't know what the problem is. Areas, like Moadamiyeh, have been under siege for a year and a half and then they did the evacuation, but they didn't bring aid to Moadamiyeh.
Assad has hit many areas with chemical weapons. They asked them to hand over the chemical weapons and not to leave. They're not even thinking about solving the source of the problem.
The Syrian people have lost a lot, but they didn't lose hope.