Summary

Mass graves uncovered in Syria after Bashar al-Assad’s overthrow reveal evidence of systematic atrocities, with over 100,000 people tortured and killed in what a top war crimes prosecutor described as the worst abuses “since the Nazis.”

Assad’s regime operated a “machinery of death,” involving mass disappearances, torture, and secret burials.

Rebel forces freed thousands of political prisoners, but many remain missing.

International efforts aim to document war crimes, though Assad, now in Russia, is unlikely to face trial.

  • vga@sopuli.xyzBanned
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    2 years ago

    So really really bog standard socialist stuff.

    Why didn’t they compare it to Stalin? His worst abuses were after Nazis and it would’ve tracked more anyway because of the political angle and because both Stalin and al-Assad committed crimes on their “own people”.

  • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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    2 years ago

    Really? Nothing else since WWII has been this bad? I can think of three off the top of my head! Syria’s neighbor is doing a holocaust right now. It’s like they’re pretending that nothing bad has happened since the Nazis were defeated.

    • DankOfAmerica@reddthat.com
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      2 years ago

      The Cambodian Genocide

      The Cambodian genocide was the systematic persecution and killing of Cambodian citizens by the Khmer Rouge under the leadership of Prime Minister of Democratic Kampuchea, Pol Pot. It resulted in the deaths of 1.5 to 2 million people from 1975 to 1979, nearly 25% of Cambodia’s population in 1975 (c. 7.8 million) reducing the nation’s life expectancy to a staggering 12 years in 1975.

    • Hubi@feddit.org
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      2 years ago

      There are 100.000 bodies in a single mass grave. And that is just one out of five. That’s kinda in a league of its own.

            • blazeknave@lemmy.world
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              2 years ago

              Stop. Let the people of Syria be recognized for the horrors they lived through. Wtf is wrong with you?

              • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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                2 years ago

                I will not allow Palestinians to be erased! Or any of the other mass murders of over 100,000 people! This disrespects every atrocity that has happened since the end of WWII, by saying those ones either aren’t real or don’t count.

                • teije9@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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                  2 years ago

                  so because theres already a genocide no other genocides can exist? Yes, the Palestina genocide is bad, but that doesn’t mean posting about any other genocide is hate towards Palestinians.

    • Karyoplasma@discuss.tchncs.de
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      2 years ago

      You mean the country that is claiming Syrian sovereign space like the Golan Heights for their illegal settlements since the 90s?

    • RunawayFixer@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      I agree with your point but I think the Palestinian genocide is a bad example. Imo better examples from the top of my mind: the Rwandan and Cambodian genocides likely were far worse both in absolute numbers and as a % of the population, and the policies of Maoist China got many more people killed.

        • Cryptagionismisogynist@lemmy.worldBanned
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          2 years ago

          Mao’s policies weren’t deliberate, the bird thing was an attempt to help his people. Idk why this is constantly brought up when it is no where in the same league as someone deliberately trying to kill people. It just reeks of stupid western propaganda.

      • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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        2 years ago

        The Palestinian genocide is happening right now, is my point. We don’t have to crawl through history to find atrocities.

        Indonesia after the CIA coup is another good example, or Iraq when we killed over a million people. This stuff is way more recent than WWII.

        • RunawayFixer@lemmy.world
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          2 years ago

          And the Palestinian genocide and your other examples aren’t “worse” in any metric (yet). The use and misrepresentation of those examples just tells us that you’re a tankie who engages in whataboutism and spreads untruths to build a narrative.

    • Valmond@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      How “whatabout” that.

      Stop trying to shove this news under the carpet with your “I know worse but I won’t tell you!!1!”

      • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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        2 years ago

        I’m trying to point out that history didn’t start and end in WWII, and pointing to something just as bad happening right now.

        • Valmond@lemmy.world
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          2 years ago

          Oh, I didn’t see that you’re an “ml”

          Whatever works in your fantasy world and makes you happy 🤷🏼‍♀️

          • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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            2 years ago

            I expect nothing less from reddit.world 🙄

            Do you really think 100,000 people haven’t been killed in any since conflict since WWII? Cuz that’s the implication.

    • Telodzrum@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      Yes, nothing.

      No one here is claiming what Israel is doing isn’t horrible (hell, you’re the only one bringing it up). But, this is worse. Wild how there can be more than one bad thing and one being worse doesn’t make the other one not bad, isn’t it?

      • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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        2 years ago

        This isn’t worse! The official death toll is a massive undercount, the real death toll is probably in the same order of magnitude.

      • empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        2 years ago

        Don’t argue with a .ml user when they move the goalposts to be “America bad” without any context. It’s a losing battle.

    • wewbull@feddit.uk
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      2 years ago

      I don’t think we need to play Topp Trumps Genocide Edition. Can we just agree that it’s horrific what Assad (and by extension, Putin) have been doing in Syria?

      • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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        2 years ago

        No, we need to acknowledge that Assad is not the worst since WWII, otherwise we erase all the other atrocities that have happened.

        Other genocides have happened. Worse genocides have happened. History didn’t start and end in WWII.

        • wewbull@feddit.uk
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          2 years ago

          You do realise that saying “… it’s not the worst that’s happened” is also a form of erasure.

          …but of course, you do.

    • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      2 years ago

      After thinking about it, I’ve realized why they always use Nazis as the measuring stick: it’s the last event of this type that the majority of Americans are familiar with.

      Which I think says quite a bit about the education level of our populace

    • Reyali@lemm.ee
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      2 years ago

      You’re angry about a headline that abbreviates the actual story.

      The very first paragraph of the article:

      Mass graves uncovered in Syria in the days since President Bashar al-Assad wasoverthrown are exposing evidence of some of the worst abuses since the Nazis, a top international war crimes prosecutor said. [emphasis mine]

      The article agrees with you. It’s only the headline that doesn’t.

      This kind of anger and engagement at headlines is exactly what the media thrives off of. Don’t let them win by doing just that.

      • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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        2 years ago

        They win by getting you to click on the article. 🙄

        They don’t get to smuggle lies into headlines and then clarify in the article. They should be held accountable for that kind of click bait.

        • Reyali@lemm.ee
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          2 years ago

          So contact NBC with your concerns. Arguing with people who can’t change it just makes people who might otherwise agree with you frustrated with your point of view.

    • perestroika@lemm.eedeleted by creator
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      2 years ago

      It’s going to take some time (and digging) to find out.

      However… events that unfolded in Cambodia will almost certainly have exceeded what is going to be discovered in Syria.

      Most likely the same can be said about things that happened in Indonesia.

      Events that continue to happen in North Korea may possibly exceed - once the place collapses and access becomes possible - which may take a century - what Bashar and his father managed to organize.

      • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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        2 years ago

        I must not! I’m pretty sure “worst since the Nazis” means " nothing between now and then was worse". As far as I was aware, worst means worse than everything else.

        Worse than Indonesia. Cambodia. Algeria. Iraq. Korea. Vietnam. Yugoslavia. Evidently no atrocities have happened since WWII! 🙄

        • john89@lemmy.caBanned
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          2 years ago

          It’s like they’re pretending that nothing bad has happened since the Nazis were defeated.

          That’s different from saying you think worse things happened.

          Might want to brush up on your reading comprehension, buddy.

          • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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            2 years ago

            If something is “the worst” then nothing worse happened, ergo, they’re pretending that all the other worse things didn’t happen. Evidently, the million people that were killed in Iraq and Indonesia just aren’t as important.

            • john89@lemmy.caBanned
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              2 years ago

              If something is “the worst” then nothing worse happened

              Yes. That’s different from “nothing bad has happened.”

      • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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        2 years ago

        The official toll isn’t over 100,000 (can’t count people under the rubble) but estimates put it over 100,000 i.e. same order of magnitude. Gaza being smaller just makes these estimates even more horrifying.

        But also, not just talking about Gaza. Lots of other atrocities have lead to mass death on this scale and larger.

    • barsoap@lemm.ee
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      2 years ago

      Finally, a comparison which doesn’t fall flat on its face like much of the rest of this thread. The intensity in Cambodia was extreme, it was under four years and 1.5 to three million killed, tortured, experimented upon, you name it. Even with everything else assumed equal the Assads were way slower at doing things.

      • Mrkawfee@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        So, Arab regimes in Egypt and Jordan are not?

        They’re all engaged in human rights violations but Syria wasn’t a US client state so it gets the Hitler treatment.

          • Mrkawfee@lemmy.world
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            2 years ago

            If they are pro US and kiss Israel’s ass their brutality is swept under the rug or whitewashed.

            You’ll never see articles like this for Sisi or King Tomato because the colonial powers are hypocrites. That’s my point.

              • Mrkawfee@lemmy.world
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                2 years ago

                Yeah so Pro US tyrants are “morons” but Assad is the most evil person ever (since Saddam Hussein presumably).

                Meanwhile Jolani is a cuddly jihadist who should be integrated into the West at light speed. The facts that he bends the knee to Israel while it is invading and bombing Syria is pure coincidence.

    • FantasticDonkey@reddthat.com
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      2 years ago

      I sympathize with the message you want to bring across, what they do in Israel could never be the worst since the Nazis because they’re like us, they’re the only dem… I can’t even write that out because it’s such a propaganda lie, but yeah I get that.

      On the other hand let me just agree with the other guy that there are just shitty and shittier dictatorships in the Middle East. Some of them are aligned with the US, some with Russia, all of them are corrupt motherfuckers who belong in jail. Arab leaders have collectively betrayed their people and who knows if that region will ever be free of imperialist forces.

  • BeMoreCareful@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    I really hope that there can be some sort of coalition for peace and recovery among the various Syrian forces now that Assad is out of power.

    • john89@lemmy.caBanned
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      2 years ago

      Mmm. We all know how this is going to go.

      The “good guys” are all of a sudden going to see the potential to have power over others, and then feel entitled to do whatever they can to maintain and expand that power.

      Before long, we have another Assad regime that’s different in name only.

      It’s a cultural problem, and greed is the root of it all.

    • barsoap@lemm.ee
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      2 years ago

      Have they been in a prison where they were regularly and systematically tortured, and that for decades, before they ended up in those bags?

      Not even a fucking month has passed and people with .ml accounts are already trivialising Assad. Tankies gotta stick to their own, I guess.

      • Doorbook@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        I don’t understand this comment but yes the Palestinian in Gaza were in a giant prison, they get restricted access to food, no freedom of movement, and when they try to peacefully leave got shot in the knees by sniper.

        • barsoap@lemm.ee
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          2 years ago

          You missed the industrial-scale torture part. There’s been some instances of torture, yes, but nothing even close to what happened in Syria in matters of both scale and systematics. The IDF, at large, has always been more interested in killing people than pure, unadulterated, sadism.

          You’re rightfully enraged about the plight of the Palestinians, now don’t turn around and deny the plight of Syrians by drawing false equivalences. If you want to draw an equivalence for the Syrian situation try North Korea.

        • Doorbook@lemmy.world
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          2 years ago

          And those who were in officially “Israeli” prisons, got raped according and torture.

      • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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        2 years ago

        Do not give them the satisfaction of being placed in the same category as their celebrity crushes. Assad is nothing like a goofy conspiracy theorist deep in the sheltered West.

      • geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml
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        2 years ago

        They are both bad. But the Assad stuff is highlighted while Gaza is ignored. The selective standards are the problems.

        Comparisons to the Holocaust are suddenly possible without anyone saying “no the Holocaust was when people were burned so Gaza is not a Holocaust”. No semantics warriors show up to defend Assad.