Four days have passed since the terrible earthquake in Turkey and Syria and the death toll from this natural disaster has reached 20 thousand people and is still increasing. Considering the severity of the earthquake and its numerous casualties, it was expected that the countries of the world would rush to the aid of the quake victims with a sense of responsibility for human lives. This expectation was fulfilled in Turkey and over 65 countries rushed to help the earthquake victims, but due to the double standards of the West, Syrian people have benefited from less aid.
The cruel sanctions imposed by the United States against Syria, which is known as Caesar's law, have faced serious problems in helping the victims of the Syrian earthquake. The Caesar Act is part of the laws enacted by US President Donald Trump against Syria in December 2019, and its purpose was to strengthen ISIS and Al-Qaeda terrorists to confront the legitimate government of Bashar al-Assad.
By enacting this law, Washington intended to increase the financial, economic, and political isolation of the Syrian government so that Syria would implement the provisions of the Security Council resolutions. According to Caesar's law, all governments, groups, companies, and individuals who directly or indirectly provide financial or military aid to the Syrian government or invest in the four sectors of oil, natural gas, military aircraft, construction, and engineering are subject to sanctions. This law came into effect on June 17, 2020, after a six-year-long delay and will be valid until 2024. Now, due to the implementation of this inhumane law, the condition of thousands of Syrian earthquake victims has been reported to be very serious, and just when helping the Syrian people is considered a definite necessity, the application of cowardly sanctions has multiplied their pain and suffering.
Washington's anti-human approach towards the Syrian people, which is an example of American human rights, has demonstrated the double standards of the West in defending human beings and has weakened the foundations of liberal democratic thinking more than in the past. American sanctions against Syria are applied with political motivations while even the United Nations has sent its first aid convoy to Syria. At the same time, there is an obstacle in the way of providing aid to the Syrian people when America and Europe spend billions of dollars to continue the war in Ukraine and prioritize the financing of the war against Russia.
Unfortunately, at the time of the earthquake in Turkey and Syria, the adoption of double standards and purposeful orientations were observed even among most of the western media, and the facts of this disaster in the reports, news, and images of the western media are very colorful regarding Turkey and dim regarding Syria. The western media publishes the news of the earthquake in Turkey under the title of "devastating earthquake" moment by moment, while the news of the earthquake in Syria is treated as a marginal issue.
Many political activists and human rights organizations around the world have criticized the American political approach in sanctioning humanitarian measures and by supporting the acceleration of aid to the victims of the Syrian earthquake, they have declared that no issue, even sanctions, should stop helping the victims, especially in the fields of food and medicine. They believe that humanitarian standards and international laws do not allow innocent people to be denied treatment and exposed to food shortages under the pretext of political sanctions.
Today, the deficiency caused by Western sanctions must be compensated by the cooperation of Islamic countries and international institutions such as the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the Non-Aligned Movement, and the World Red Cross Organization, and necessary efforts should be made to deal with the humanitarian disaster in Syria. At this point, it is necessary to activate all the diplomatic capacity of the countries that are friendly to Syria, including the Islamic Republic of Iran, and by increasing contact with the independent countries and free people of the world, ask them to oppose the oppressive Western sanctions against Syria and demand the abolition of Caesar's racist law.
At the same time, it is expected that free thinkers and writers, both in Iran and in the world, will reveal the dimensions of human rights violations by Washington during the Syrian earthquake, and the reluctance of the United States and Western countries to cancel at least part of the sanctions on Syria and To help this damaged country, pay and explain the political approach of Western countries to deal with Syria and strengthen the terrorists present in this country.
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