Lisa Karpova / Global Research & Thalif Deen / Inter Press Service – 2014-05-20 01:20:23
Syria: Aleppo Is Dying from Lack of Water
Lisa Karpova / Global Research
(May 16, 2014) — Hear the cries of Aleppo dying? No?? Where is the outcry to save these people? All of the notorious empire-serving human rights organizations and the corporate media are silent, deliberately ignoring the plight of the people in Aleppo, Syria. The FUKUS axis is perpetrating a human disaster by arming and supporting terrorists within Syria who have cut off water and electricity to the people of Aleppo.
What comes to them as second nature is the commission of war crimes against civilian populations to “break their backs.” Under the 1949 Geneva Convention, collective punishment is a war crime. Article 33 of the Fourth Convention states: “No protected person may be punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed.”
Now if these terrorists are fighting for the people, as corporate western media claims, as Obama, Kerry and company claim, if these wrongly identified as “rebels” are part of the people and not foreign invaders, why are they creating a humanitarian disaster among the people? Obviously, they don’t care about the people. They only care about collecting their money as proxies of the cursed empire.
John Kerry, Barack Obama and Victoria Nuland are all lying sacks of trash, as we witnessed in Kiev and Southeastern Ukraine when their fascist Nazi proxies fired upon civilians with military hardware and burned Odessa residents in the Trade Union building. They perpetrated the violent overthrow of the democratically elected government of Ukraine, burning alive the police and firing upon civilians in a false flag operation.
It is time for the world to tell these sadistic, demonic cretins to shove their lies back into their duplicitous, hypocritical faces. They have massive amounts of innocent blood on their hands. Global domination is their only cause, forget the nonsense about freedom and democracy, they are the antithesis of the same.
The main source of drinking water in Aleppo, the Suleiman al-Halabi station, has been cut off for the whole city by FUKUS axis sponsored terrorists for over 10 consecutive days, sending water to Quiq River and wasting it to prevent citizens from having clean water.
Citizens of Aleppo, including children, have been seen desperately trying to collect stagnant water that is dirty and contaminated. This will lead to the spread of disease.
Water is one of the nature’s most essential gifts to mankind. The basic need for survival of the human being is water, even more so than food. Water is life. It is important for the sustenance and growth of human beings, as well as of all animals and plants.
Our body needs water in many different forms in order to keep functioning. Clean water is absolutely essential for healthy living. I have seen estimates from 3 days to two weeks for how long a human being in decent health can survive without water.
Dysentery, Cholera, severe diarrhea, Hepatitis A and lead poisoning, are among the diseases caused by drinking dirty, polluted water.
US half wits want everyone that won’t obey American demands to be killed. US demonic monsters have murdered millions of women and children all across the globe. That such psychopathic creatures were born and live among human beings is unfathomable. That they find so many willing stooges and proxies to do their dirty work is even more unfathomable. They seem to have an endless supply. There is no terrorist or fascist they will refrain from using in order to achieve their nefarious goals.
In letters sent to the UN Secretary-General and the UN Security Council’s President, the Syrian Foreign Ministry said that terrorists have been “punishing three million persons because they renounced the crimes committed by the terrorists, adding that this act is yet another crime committed by the terrorist groups against the city’s civilians.”
Aleppo civilians have been targeted for many months, with mortar and rocket shells which claimed the lives of hundreds of civilians, in addition to having supply lines cut off into the city to prevent food and medicine from being delivered to the citizens. Now water and electricity are cut off to the whole city.
Why is the world is silent as Aleppo slowly goes silent due to thirst and dehydration? There are about 3 million people without water in one of Syria’s oldest cities.
The Russian Foreign Ministry condemned expanded US sanctions against Syria as “rude” and being imposed in violation of international law. This all occurs in the backdrop of a recent agreement for terrorists to withdraw from Homs…and just like magic, there is peace and rebuilding of the city without their presence.
Washington ignores the bloody, horrendous crimes of the terrorists in Syria, while punishing Syrian ministers whom it charges with allegedly escalating violence in the country.
We are entering a particularly interesting period of time where the cursed empire is no longer able, due to technology, to hide the crimes it commits or is complicit in. Let their “darling rebels” be put on notice that the world is watching, just like they were watching Odessa and Mariupol, and if they continue their crimes against humanity, they will pay the price.
There is no immunity for such horrendous crimes against humanity, as established at Nuremberg, along with no statute of limitations. They will be found in whatever hole they choose to crawl into. You too, Obama, Kerry, Nuland!
UN Decries Water as Weapon of War in Military Conflicts
Thalif Deen / Inter Press Service
UNITED NATIONS (May 19, 2014) — The United Nations, which is trying to help resolve the widespread shortage of water in the developing world, is faced with a growing new problem: the use of water as a weapon of war in ongoing conflicts.
The most recent examples are largely in the Middle East and Africa, including Iraq, Egypt, Israel (where supplies to the occupied territories have been shut off) and Botswana.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon last week expressed concern over reports that water supplies in the besieged Syrian city of Aleppo were deliberately cut off by armed groups for eight days, depriving at least 2.5 million people of access to safe water for drinking and sanitation.
“Preventing people’s access to safe water is a denial of a fundamental human right,” he warned, pointing out that “deliberate targeting of civilians and depriving them of essential supplies is a clear breach of international humanitarian and human rights law.”
In the four-year Syrian civil war, water is being used as a weapon by all parties to the conflict, including the government of President Bashar al-Assad and the multiple rebel groups fighting to oust him from power.
The conflict has claimed the lives of over 150,000 people and displaced nearly nine million Syrians.
The violation of international humanitarian law in Syria includes torture and deprivation of food and water.
Maude Barlow, who represents both the Council of Canadians and Food and Water Watch, told IPS water is being increasingly and deliberately used a a weapon of war in recent and ongoing conflicts.
During the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, the Mesopotamian Marshes were drained, she said.
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein drained them further during the 1990s in retribution against Shias who hid there and the Marsh Arabs (Ma’dan) who protected them, she pointed out.
The privatisation of water in Egypt and its diversion to the wealthy was a major factor in the “Arab Spring” uprising, said Barlow, a former senior advisor on water to the president of the General Assembly back in 2008/2009.
Thousands suddenly had no access to clean water and “thirst protests” were partial catalysts for the large uprising.
Also, more than four decades of Israeli occupation have made it impossible to develop or maintain infrastructure for water in Gaza, causing the contamination of drinking water and many deaths, she declared.
Barlow also said Botswana used water as a weapon against the Kalahari bushmen in an attempt to force them out of the desert, where diamonds had been discovered.
In 2002, the government smashed their only major water borehole, a terrible act that was only overturned in court years later, she noted.
Last week, Anand Grover and Catarina de Albuquerque, two U.N. experts on water and sanitation, said interference with water supplies even in the context of an ongoing conflict is entirely unacceptable.
They said the city of Aleppo has had intermittent access to water from the beginning of May 2014, with a total cut in supply on May 10, resulting in many, perhaps a million people, left without access to safe water and sanitation.
This affected homes, hospitals and medical centres, the two U.N. experts said.
The cuts appeared to come about as a result of deliberate interference with the water supply, with conflicting allegations suggesting that some armed opposition groups and the government of Syria have both been responsible at different times and to differing degrees, they pointed out.
Barlow told IPS the al-Assad government’s denial of clean water is consistent with its history of using water to punish its enemies and reward its friends.
In 2000, the Syrian regime deregulated land use and gave vast quantities of land and water to its wealthy allies, severely diminishing the water table and driving nearly one million small farmers and herders off the land, she added.
Ironically and tragically, many of them migrated to Aleppo where they are being targeted again, said Barlow,
She also said water has also been deployed as a weapon of “class war.”
Many thousands of inner city residents unable to pay their water bills have had their water services cut in Detroit, Michigan, in the United States, and more recently, as a result of Europe’s austerity programme, in Spain, Greece and Bulgaria.
“Water as a weapon of war is a strong argument to governments and the U.N. they must make real the human right to water and sanitation, regardless of other conflicts taking place,” said Barlow.
Meanwhile, since 1990, almost two billion people globally have gained access to improved sanitation, and 2.3 billion have gained access to drinking water from improved sources, according to a new U.N. report released last week.
The joint report by the U.N. Children’s Fund and the World Health Organisation said about 1.6 billion of these people have piped water connections in their homes or compounds.
Titled “Progress on Drinking Water and Sanitation: 2014 Update,” the report said more than half of the global population lives in cities, and urban areas are still better supplied with improved water and sanitation than rural ones.
“But the gap is decreasing.”
In 1990, more than 76 percent of the people living in urban areas had access to improved sanitation, as opposed to only 28 percent in rural ones.
By 2012, 80 percent urban dwellers and 47 percent rural ones had access to better sanitation.
“Despite this progress,” the report warned, “sharp geographic, socio-cultural, and economic inequalities in access to improved drinking water and sanitation facilities still persist around the world.”
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