Tim Anderson: US sanctions on Syria violate international law
In the presence of Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates, Dr. Bashar Al-Jaafari, the Diplomatic Institute of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates on Monday organized a lecture to review the books “War Propaganda and the Dirty War on Syria” and the “Axis of Resistance: towards an independent Middle East” by Tim Anderson, the Australian writer and professor of Political Sciences at the University of Sydney.
In an introduction speech, Al-Jaafari said that in these two books, Anderson proved that the so-called “sanctions as well as the western humanitarian intervention and protection of civilians” are just terms to reintroduce colonialism in a new way, which Anderson called “neo-colonialism.”
Al-Jaafari highly appreciated Anderson’s support for Syria during the period of the war on the country and before, stressing that he was among the first intellectuals to warn against the danger of being guided by terms like the so-called Arab Spring and popular revolution and other misleading slogans that began to be promoted in Tunisia in early 2011.
Anderson is also a strong defender of the Palestinian cause and he adopted honorable stances in this regard and he even paid expensively for his stances which reject Zionism and support the Palestinian people’s rights, Al-Jaafari said.
Regarding the double standards policies of the Western countries, Al-Jaafari made it clear that “only in Syria, moderate and armed opposition are allowed to exist. In France, Britain and the United States, this is not allowed,” stressing that these western countries imposed illegal economic sanctions on Syria to support this “moderate opposition”.
Al-Jaafari pointed out that the crisis in Syria led to the emergence of friendly cultural and intellectual icons who defended Syria and its people, including Professor Tim Anderson, US Senator Richard Black, British blogger Vanessa Beeley, former French ambassador Michel Rimbaud Mexican-American activist Karla Astia, American Peace Group and its most prominent members Barbara Lee, James Jackson, Jose New Old, Alice Farmer and Leslie Keeegan, in addition to Professor Ian Henderson, former investigator for the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), Jose Al-Bustani, the former executive director of this organization, the American journalist Aaron Mattei, the British writer and journalist Patrick Seale and several European Parliamentarians.
On his part, Anderson said that the unilateral coercive measures imposed by Washington on Syria are illegal according to the international law, adding that it is very essential to differentiate between what the US and its allies call sanctions and the war of blockade on Syria, which both aim at subjugating Syria and other sovereign independent countries.
He affirmed that the US economic wars against independent states are illegitimate and they violate all laws and International conventions.
Anderson clarified that the sanctions, which are accompanied by land and maritime siege and war propaganda that seeks regime change, are a form of war of blockade, citing as examples the economic war on Syria, Cuba, Iran, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Yemen as well as the sanctions imposed on resistance groups in Iraq and Lebanon as a means to political coercion that aims at limiting the influence of these groups.
Hamda Mustafa