Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on March 1st, 2018

[Muzna Dureid]

Yes, exactly.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Thank you.

[Cheryl Hardcastle, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

I'd like to ask all three of you, if I may, to talk a bit more about the point that Muzna raised with regard to evacuation and safe passage. Hussam raised the issue of humanitarian aid, and I think so did you, Dr. Al-Kassem.

The way I understanding it is that, in contrast to Aleppo, eastern Ghouta is sealed off in a way we haven't seen before. I'm trying to look for concrete things that Canada can push for in the short term, and it sounds to me like the humanitarian window that Russia called for might be something we can push for so that people have a safe corridor out or so that humanitarian and medical aid can get in. Is that something that has merit?

As you're thinking about your answer, think about where people would go. Let's say that we did come up with a safe corridor. How does Eastern Ghouta fit in the bigger picture around it? Is it safe? Are there places where people could go around them? How are they faring, compared to other places in the country?

I'm finished. I'm not going to ask any more questions so that all of you can take my time to discuss this.

[Dr. Anas Al-Kassem]

I can take this one. Thank you very much for the question.

To start with, the humanitarian window from nine o'clock to two o'clock suggested by Russia does not make any sense. It's not logical. It's absurd. This is not my opinion or the organization's opinion. This is the opinion of the medical staff on the ground.

The reason is that, in the last few days, after Resolution 2401, they said that there are some air strikes in the morning, but not as many, say five to six in the morning, and then more escalation in the afternoon and more in the evening. Therefore, they still have to get outside to get the injured after two o'clock. The ambulances are being attacked after two o'clock, so there's no sense in telling them, “From nine to two, you can do your work, and then I'm going to hit you. I'm going to continue with air strikes after two o'clock.” We are going to have more casualties, as we're trying to evacuate. We're going to have hundreds more people injured.

We need 100%, for 24-hours, and this is what resolution 2401 said. It must be 24 hours. Otherwise, there is no sense in implementing five hours only.

In terms of the second part of your question, the people don't want to be displaced. They've been in eastern Ghouta for hundreds of years, some of them, like the farmers, for thousands of years, so they don't want to go to Aleppo and Idlib. It's a completely different land, a different country for them. They know nothing about it. In the experience with Aleppo, the UN did very minimal things. If anything, the NGOs, the non-profit organizations, really helped the people in Aleppo to evacuate.

In Aleppo, in the best scenario, we have a population of about 50,000. Here, we have 400,000, so I think it's going to be impossible for a population of 400,000 to be evacuated far away. In Aleppo, they went to some towns nearby, so if you have towns surrounding your city, it would all be familiar. You may have some friends and colleagues who can take you.

Here, we're talking about an area completely surrounded by the regime. If they go to Aleppo or to Idlib, that's going to be 300 kilometres. They know no one over there, so from a humanitarian and social aspect, I don't think that what Russia and the regime have been pushing for is even possible or logical.

[Muzna Dureid]

From 2013 to 2016, Assad's regime called it a reconciliation operation with neighbours in Damascus, like Qaboun or Muadamiyat. The experience from those evacuations was the men going to prison or being recruited for the army, and the children and women staying in the schools. Those schools were held by the Assad regime. There were no other scenarios or other plans from the regime.

For Aleppo, there is the border with Turkey, which helped civilians evacuate outside of Syria. For Ghouta, there is no border or any country that might help to take those civilians.

We repeat our demands, which are also the demands from the ground. The civilians from Ghouta don't want to leave the area because they have the right to stay on their land. This is one of the first articles of the human rights declaration. We want to put pressure on the regime.

[Dr. Hussam Alfakir]

I have the same answer, so I don't have anything to add. People don't want to leave. We just need more access for them to get humanitarian aid in.

[Cheryl Hardcastle, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

What we need is safe access, a safe corridor for getting supplies and humanitarian aid in. That's what we should be concentrating on, in the short term of course.

[Muzna Dureid]

Yes, we need a no-fly zone. There have been months of bombing.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Thank you very much.

We will now move to MP Tabbara.

[Marwan Tabbara, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much to all of you testifying here today. This is very important, and we are trying to shed some light on the ongoing devastation that is happening in Syria.

I want to talk to Dr. Al-Kassem and Dr. Al Fakir.

In your opening statements, you talked about the dire need for medical supplies and the extent of the damage sustained by these facilities. Dr. Al-Kassem, I believe you mentioned that there have been 33 attacks on medical facilities. Can you elaborate on the extent of the dire need for these urgent medical supplies?

[Dr. Anas Al-Kassem]

Thank you very much, MP Tabbara, for the question.

In terms of the medical supplies, as I mentioned before, for about 15 months there has been no entry of any kind of medical supplies. The good thing is that, for years, there has been storage by the Ghouta people in Arbin, which is on the west side of eastern Ghouta. There has been some storage of medical supplies, including catheters, anaesthesia drugs, and sutures, but most of them are expired now because of the 15 months.

A surgeon colleague, Dr. Hossam Hamdan, who works in the only hospital left in Douma, which our organization supports, tells me that he does not have certain surgical sutures. We are not even talking about the difficult-to-treat injuries. He had a patient come in for an urgent C-section, and he did not have sutures to oversew the uterus. He told me he was desperate. He didn't know what to do. He didn't know how he was a surgeon when he had no equipment and no sutures at hand.

There are certain sutures. There are catheters, for instance the Foley catheter or the central line catheter, that are essentially used to transfuse blood and to give saline. There are no saline bags. That is very essential for any kind of resuscitation of patients with injuries. There are no saline bags in Ghouta, and they're trying to produce saline but it's not safe. There are air strikes going on.

It is not a very good environment for any kind of production. Yesterday we heard that a pharmaceutical company was targeted by air strikes. It's not only 33 facilities that were targeted in the last two weeks. Even the few factories producing medical supplies have been targeted by air strikes from Russia or the Syrian regime.

[Marwan Tabbara, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Perhaps I can just add to that. Generally, whenever there is an intervention or a bombing campaign from a certain force, they target the electricity compounds, the electrical grids. I know that this was cut off days or maybe a few hours prior to the siege. Are they targeting these types of facilities, or are they targeting indiscriminately and just hitting medical facilities?

I know had a colleague, a doctor, who recently passed away.

Can you elaborate on this?

[Dr. Hussam Alfakir]

I'll comment on this.

[Dr. Anas Al-Kassem]

Sorry, go ahead.

[Dr. Hussam Alfakir]

Most of the facilities over there are working on generators. There really is no electricity that gets to the hospital. They're using generators to operate the hospitals in that region. As Dr. Al-Kassem mentioned, and I'll elaborate on it, people there have been really creative in finding the means to do this, whether it's for medical procedures or finding energy for those generators. He mentioned that they're using plastic bags to make fuel. They have some chemists over there who have been creating fuel out of the plastic bags. It's almost like a margarine type of material, actually, which they use to make those generators work.

There is no power there per se. That was ruined a long time ago, as far as I know.

Anas, do you have anything to add?

[Marwan Tabbara, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

I just have one last thing for Ms. Muzna Dureid.

You said that your family is in eastern Ghouta, just a couple of kilometres from Damascus. I've heard that in Damascus the people's situation is not ideal, but there are no bombing campaigns. They're even free to travel to Lebanon and back and forth. As the Assad regime is closing in on Ghouta and besieging the city, can you talk about the differences between those living in eastern Ghouta and those living in the capital, Damascus?

[Muzna Dureid]

Yes, but first, we were just talking about energy. My uncle uses a bike for energy to charge the mobile. He uses electricity from a bike. He uses the bike when there's no food to feed them. He needs to use the bike to make energy. There are no resources for them.

On the situation in south Damascus and Ghouta, part of my family is with the Assad regime, working with the Assad regime, with the government. They supported it. However, half of my family has been under siege for five years. In Damascus, life is very normal. They travel, they eat, and they educate themselves in universities and schools, all those things. However, for Ghouta there is no education. All my cousins have been without school for five years. There is no food. There is no communication. There is no normal life. There is just bombing and dying every day. This explains what it means when you take up a political opinion against the regime. All of your life will change after this decision.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Thank you.

We will now move to MP Anderson.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

I want to thank you for that, because I think we all understand the vicious history of this regime. That's why people are concerned.

Dr. Al Fakir, I think you said that foreign fighters are not involved in this. I'm wondering if you can give us a sense of the makeup of the military presence that is opposing the regime in this area. What percentage of the population is involved in supporting this? Sometimes you get these conflicts where the population is just forced to be there, while in other places the population is very supportive of what is going on. Can you give us a picture of what's going on in terms of the defence of this city and the opposition to the regime?

[Dr. Hussam Alfakir]

They're standing.... Again, my information is from the medical people on the ground and what they're telling me. I don't have a military background, and I don't know what's going on there military-wise, really, in more specific detail. What I was told is that there are no foreign fighters there because the area has been under siege for many years—we've talked about four and a half years under siege—so there are no foreign people coming in. Let's say that some people smuggled themselves in, found a way to get in, but they would be a very small minority. The majority of the people there, the local people, they're really protecting their lands and families.

As I said, it's more of an ideological issue. The government wants to force itself on the people, and the people are resisting. The local people have armed themselves by getting stolen weapons or whatever they can get their hands on to protect their families. Their families are really what they are protecting. For instance, the militants will never use their families as a human shield, as the government keeps saying, because nobody uses their own family as a human shield. They are fighting to protect their families.

Also, their families don't feel safe leaving the area because they don't trust the government. If they go out, they will be imprisoned, killed, or tortured. They really don't trust the government, so they won't leave. The people who are inside feel trapped. Really, the local people—the farmers, the workers, the shop owners, whoever—are carrying arms and defending their town and their homes. This is the image I got, and I really believe it. As I said, if there are foreign fighters, they would be a very small minority—maybe 100 or 200 people at the most.

I hope I've answered your question.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

I think so. Does anyone else have a response?

[Muzna Dureid]

Yes. I will talk about the situation in Deir ez-Zor. When Deir ez-Zor was besieged by IS, the international coalition dropped food for the civilians there. Why, then, when there is an area besieged by the Assad regime, is there no help by dropping food from airplanes, or any kind of help?

Also, there is an armed group in Ghouta. It seems normal because it's been seven or eight years of war in Syria. Also, it's not a cause to target civilians, or schools, or hospitals. It's not a cause to use a chemical attack, and chlorine, and sarin. It's not a cause to do all that. We saw the reaction of the international community with IS, but we didn't see that with the Assad regime.

This is the point. That's very clear.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

That's the concern of the committee, that we are seeing that as well.

I want to talk a bit about the chemical attacks. On February 25, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said that it was going to investigate the reports. In the past, when they went in, they were attacked, ambushed, or whatever.

Do you have any comment on how they go about doing their work in a situation like the one they would find themselves in? Do you have anything to do with them, or does that fall outside the scope of what you do?

[Dr. Anas Al-Kassem]

There has been a chlorine attack documented by the doctors. We did not communicate directly with the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, but I know that Mr. Mulet has been assigned by the UN and he proved the usage of sarin gas, as my colleague said, as well as many other gases in Syria, including in Khan Shaykhun in 2016, which we all heard about, as well as Ghouta, which was the first big massacre by chemical attack, in 2013, killing 1,400 in the same area that is now under siege.

Chlorine gas was used on Sunday, the day after Resolution 2401 was implemented. We communicated with the doctors on the ground. Fourteen people were injured and one child died because of that chemical attack. Unfortunately, the doctors on the ground have become very familiar with what has been used every time. I myself have taken courses about chemical attacks. We don't want to wait for any other organization to come in, because we know the symptoms. I know them more than I know the symptoms of someone coming in with a cough in Canada.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Thank you.

I have one other question. Are there other areas in Syria that are being besieged and perhaps aren't getting the same kind of attention? Are there other areas that we should be paying attention to and noting in our discussions and conclusions out of this? Are there other places about which you would say, “Turn your head and take a look at this as well”?