[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 26 (Tuesday, February 14, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1157-S1158]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
RUSSIAN ATROCITIES IN ALEPPO
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, we have heard a lot about President Trump's
admiration of Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom most objective
observers regard as a murderous thug and a kleptocrat. As we consider
the President's statements lauding Putin for being a ``strong leader''
and his silence about the imprisonment and assassinations of Putin's
critics and Russia's invasion of Ukraine, annexation of Crimea, and
atrocities in Syria, I am reminded of the remarks delivered on December
13 by Samantha Power, former Permanent Representative to the United
Nations, at the U.N. Security Council.
Ambassador Power delivered a passionate appeal to the Security
Council to take action to protect civilians under assault in Aleppo,
including to hold in contempt the governments of Syria, Russia, and
Iran for their war crimes in Syria. Her remarks stand as a stark
contrast to what we are hearing from the White House today. This is a
time to condemn Vladmir Putin's aggressions against the people of
Russia, of Ukraine, and of Syria--not to regard him as an example of a
leader to emmulate.
It is also a time for Republicans to stand up for our own democracy,
after the Russian Government, at Putin's direction, actively sought to
sway the outcome of the U.S. Presidential election. The unanimous
conclusion of U.S. intelligence agencies is that Putin, a former KGB
agent, ordered a cyber attack on our electoral system in favor of
Donald Trump. Russia's goals ``were to undermine public faith in the
U.S. democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her
electability and potential presidency.'' Yet the White House and
Republican leaders in Congress have been silent, apparently unconcerned
about a foreign assault on our electoral system, refusing to even
support an independent investigation. Imagine what they would be saying
if their candidate had lost. They would be demanding a new election and
trying to shut down the government.
I ask unanmious consent that Ambassador Power's remarks be printed in
the Record to serve as a reminder of the scale of the humanitarian
disaster in Syria perpetrated by Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin and
our moral obligation to pursue accountability for those responsible.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
Remarks at a UN Security Council Emergency Briefing on
Syria
Ambassador Samantha Power
U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations
U.S. Mission to the United Nations
New York City
December 13, 2016
AS DELIVERED
Thank you. Here is what is happening right now in eastern
Aleppo. Syrians trapped by the fighting are sending out their
final appeals for help, or they are saying their goodbyes. A
doctor named Mohammad Abu Rajab left a voice message: ``This
is a final distress call to the world. Save the lives of
these children and women and old men. Save them. Nobody is
left. You might not hear our voice after this.'' A
photographer named Ameen Al-Halabi wrote on Facebook: ``I am
waiting to die or be captured by the Assad regime. Pray for
me and always remember us.'' A teacher named Abdulkafi Al-
Hamdo said: ``I can tweet now but I might not do it forever.
Please save my daughter's life and others. This is a call
from a father.'' Another doctor told a journalist: ``Remember
that there was a city called Aleppo that the world erased
from the map and history.''
This is what is happening in eastern Aleppo. This is what
is being done by Member States of the United Nations who are
sitting around this horseshoe table today. This is what is
being done to the people of eastern
[[Page S1158]]
Aleppo, to fathers, and mothers, and sons, and daughters,
brothers, and sisters like each of us here.
It is extremely hard to get information, of course, out of
the small area still held by the opposition. You will hear
this as an alibi as a way of papering over what video
testimony, phone calls, and others are bringing us live. You
will hear this invoked--that it is hard to verify. It is
deliberate. The Assad regime and Russia backed by Iran using
militia on the ground have done everything they can to cut
off the city. So you will hear, ``well, we don't really know,
maybe it's made up''--but they are hiding what is happening
from the world. It would be easy for independent
investigators to get in along with food, health workers, and
others; but instead, the perpetrators are hiding their brutal
assault from the world willfully. But consider the accounts
that have made it out--so many of them--first responders
describing children's voices from beneath the rubble of
collapsed buildings. There are no first responders or
equipment left to dig them out, and no doctors left to treat
them. Bodies lying in the streets of eastern Aleppo, but no
one dares collect them, for fear of getting bombed or shot to
death in the process. Up to a hundred children are reportedly
trapped right now, in a building under heavy fire.
Terrorists. Clearly--young children--they must be terrorists
because everybody being executed, everybody being barrel
bombed, everybody who's been chlorine attacked, you're going
to be told they are all terrorists--every last one of them,
even the infants.
The regime of Bashar Al-Assad, Russia, Iran, and their
affiliated militia are the ones responsible for what the UN
called ``a complete meltdown of humanity.'' And they are
showing no mercy:
No mercy despite their territorial conquests--even now, no
mercy. In the last 24 hours alone, pro-Assad forces
reportedly killed at least 82 civilians, including 11 women
and 13 children.
These forces are reportedly entering homes and executing
civilians on the spot, as we have heard. And according to the
Office for the High Commissioner for Human Rights, foreign
militias like Iraqi Harakat Al-Nujaba organization are
involved in these killings. Where civilians are able to run
the gauntlet and make it across the frontlines, Syrian
intelligence agencies are pulling people aside and sending
them away, perhaps to be gang-pressed to the front lines,
likely to the same prisons where we know the Assad regime
tortures and executes those in its custody.
In light of these reports, we join others, especially the
Secretary-General, in one of his final appeals, reiterating
our call to the Assad regime and Russia to stop their assault
on Aleppo, to protect civilians. We call on Russia and Assad
to allow impartial, international observers into the city to
oversee the safe evacuation of the people who wish to leave,
but who justifiably fear that if they try, they will be shot
in the street or carted off to one of Assad's gulags.
The Assad regime and Russia appear dead set on seizing
every last square inch of Aleppo by force, no matter how many
innocent bodies pile up in their wake. But we keep insisting
on answering the UN call for access, for safe and orderly
evacuation, because we are not willing to accept that
innocent men, women, and children can be butchered simply
because they happen to live in a conflict area. Our shared
humanity and security demands that certain rules of war hold,
the most basic. And it is up to each and every one of us here
to defend those rules.
To the Assad regime, Russia, and Iran--three Member States
behind the conquest of and carnage in Aleppo--you bear
responsibility for these atrocities. By rejecting UN-ICRC
evacuation efforts, you are signaling to those militia who
are massacring innocents to keep doing what they are doing.
Denying or obfuscating the facts--as you will do today--
saying up is down, black is white, will not absolve you. When
one day there is a full accounting of the horrors committed
in this assault of Aleppo--and that day will come, sooner or
later--you will not be able to say you did not know what was
happening. You will not be able to say you were not involved.
We all know what is happening. And we all know you are
involved.
Aleppo will join the ranks of those events in world history
that define modern evil, that stain our conscience decades
later. Halabja, Rwanda, Srebrenica, and, now, Aleppo. To the
Assad regime, Russia, and Iran, your forces and proxies are
carrying out these crimes. Your barrel bombs and mortars and
airstrikes have allowed the militia in Aleppo to encircle
tens of thousands of civilians in your ever-tightening noose.
It is your noose. Three Member States of the UN contributing
to a noose around civilians. It should shame you. Instead, by
all appearances, it is emboldening you. You are plotting your
next assault. Are you truly incapable of shame? Is there
literally nothing that can shame you? Is there no act of
barbarism against civilians, no execution of a child that
gets under your skin, that just creeps you out a little bit?
Is there nothing you will not lie about or justify?
To the members of this Council, and all Member States of
the United Nations: Know that the ghastly tactics we are
witnessing in Aleppo will not stop if the city falls. The
regime and its Russian allies will only be emboldened to
replicate their starve-and-surrender-and-slaughter tactics
elsewhere. This will be their model for attempting to retake
cities and towns across Syria.
It will not end with Aleppo. And it will not focus on
terrorists. It never has, and there is no evidence that it
will.
This is why it is so essential that each of us right here--
no matter how small a country you are, no matter what your
view of sovereignty, if you share our view that terrorism is
one of the singular causes on earth worth fighting, it
doesn't matter--you have a responsibility to denounce these
atrocities. We have just heard the Secretary-General state it
plainly. You have to tell those responsible that they must
stop. This isn't the time for more equivocation, for self-
censoring, for avoiding naming names, for diplomatic niceties
of the kind that are so well-practiced here on the Council.
Say who is responsible. Appeal to Moscow, to Damascus, to
Tehran, that they have to stop. Use every channel you have--
public, private, bankshot, through someone who knows someone.
The lives of tens of thousands of Syrians still in eastern
Aleppo--between 30,000-60,000 people--and hundreds of
thousands more across the country who are besieged, depend on
it.
I thank you.
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