agine if war was at your doorstep, what would you save? Or rather who would you save? Your father? Your mother, your siblings or your spouse? We sitting here today are fortunate enough not to be experiencing a situation such as Syria where according to a BBC report in 2015, more than 250,000 people have died over the course of a 4 and a half year Syrian Civil War, which still goes on till date. Today I will be informing you about the background of the Syrian government, the reasons within Syria that lead to the Civil war and Refugee Crisis and the current situation of the Syrian refugee crisis
To understand the severity of this Refugee Crisis, we need to connect it back to its roots, the Syrian Government. The Syrian government is lead by President Bashar Al Assad, who came into rule in 2000 after both his father and elder brother passed away. Before he was elected his father ruled Syria for 30 years, he modernised the country but at the cost of a brutal repression by surpressing the thoughts and actions of people and the Emergency Law – the law of arresting anyone who went against the government was applied since 1963 and continued throughout his rule. When Bashar Al Assad was sworn in as president, he signalled he would be a different kind of leader and promised political reforms , and according to the BBC news report in 2015, President Assad promised wide-ranging reforms, including modernising the economy, fighting corruption and launching "our own democratic experience" during his inaugural speech. however things did not go quite as planned, The reasons only kept building up until the civil war Assad quickly dashed hopes of reform, as power remained concentrated in the ruling family, and the one-party system left few channels for political dissent. At the first sight of dissent, Assad tightened the restriction to free speech and the Emergency Law continued to be in action until 2011. Economic liberalization mainly benefited a politically connected elite without helping the many Syrians who depended on the faltering public sector for employment, services, and subsidies. To add to the distress of the Syrians, Syria suffered a persistent drought from 2008 and the lack of government intervention angered the citizens. In March 2011, antigovernment protests broke out in Syria, inspired by a wave of similar demonstrations elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa that had already ousted the long-serving presidents of Tunisia and Egypt. However, President Assad was determined and refuses to step down as he states during an interview with Russia Today that “I was made in Syria. I have to live in Syria and die in Syria”. The protests multiplied as the repression continued and Assad’s army answered by opening fire against the demonstrators, Violence escalated and so did the number of deaths, According to BBC , By June 2013, the UN said 90,000 people had been killed in the conflict. However, by August 2014 that figure had more than doubled to 191,000.
Lastly, triggered by the civil war in Syria, The Syrian refugee crisis is one of the largest human tragedies since World War II.According to the United Nations Refugee Agency, the constant political unrest have forced about 11 million people to flee from their home. When BBC asked to the citizens how they lived in Syria, Mariam Akash, whos husband died from a sniper shot said “we’re just living on the edge of life, were always nervous, were always afraid”. Many have taken desperate measures to flee by land and sea in the darkness of the night with the moonlight being the only guide showing them the way and numerous tragedies have occurred while d oing so. Onepicture that took the internet by storm of the Syrian refugee crisis and emphasized on its severity was this 3 year old little Kurdish boy who drowned and was found on the shore of a Turkish beach. Although this was one of the first pictures which created a global outcry and made the world realise the severity of the crisis, it isn’t the last. As of yesterday, Jazeera News has reported that more than 70 children have drowned and died only while trying to cross the sea from Syria. At an age where they should’ve been in nursery or playschool learning their first alphabets, here they were taking their last breaths.