The massive earthquakes that have caused tens of thousands of deaths and injuries in Syria and Turkey, leveling homes, apartment buildings, hospitals, bridges, roads, and infrastructure, call out for the assistance and solidarity of the world’s government’s and peoples.
The Canadian government must respond by lifting the sanctions and the economic blockade against Syria which make the horrific consequences of two massive earthquakes and many aftershocks infinitely worse for the civilian population of Syria. Already victimized by a long war and years of sanctions by NATO countries including Canada, the people of Syria are dying, as international help is withheld from Syria, and focused only on Turkey.
Time is of the essence in Syria, as in Turkey, with many victims alive and entombed in collapsed buildings, with freezing winter weather shortening the lives of survivors, the injured and those still to be found. This is a humanitarian catastrophe of global proportions.
Instead of sanctions and blockade, Canada must send urgent aid and assistance to Syria, lift the sanctions, and call on the international community to do the same.
Politicizing this catastrophe by maintaining sanctions and blockade, by withholding aid, or by directing aid to the disgraced White Helmets, would be a crime.
History will record what the Canadian government did, and didn’t do, at this critical moment.
The Canadian government must act to save lives in Syria now.
Central Executive Committee, Communist Party of Canada
February 8, 2023