Syrian mass graves show the worst abuses 'since the Nazis,' top prosecutor says (www.nbcnews.com)
from MicroWave@lemmy.world to world@lemmy.world on 18 Dec 18:31
https://lemmy.world/post/23285399

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.

#world

threaded - newest

queermunist@lemmy.ml on 18 Dec 18:55 next collapse

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.

Eheran@lemmy.world on 18 Dec 19:26 next collapse

The Russians never stopped doing such things. Before, during and after WW2.

LustyArgonianMana@lemmy.world on 20 Dec 09:53 collapse

Yeah, from what I’ve gathered, Putin has enslaved and trafficked his own people (and in some cases killed and grave robbed them) for money and blackmail. Remember the monkey torture video rings? Well, it seems like Putin was doing that with his own people along with prisoners and trafficked people from other countries, to make every kind of video you could think of, to sell to influential people worldwide to gain blackmail on them. He also likely had irl experiences that people like Trump engaged in.

In Michael Wolff’s Fire&Fury podcast and book, he asserts Russia has pictures of Trump with topless minors. Katie Johnson also said he raped her and another girl when they were 13 and 12, and hit them afterwards for not performing good enough. This is absolutely a man who would engage in disturbing behavior overseas, and Epstein himself called Trump depraved and said there was nothing he couldn’t do. You can listen to Epstein himself say it in the podcast.

There’s also the Active Measures documentary with John McCain and Hilary Clinton. And Unger’s book American Kompromat.

So yeah, it’s likely the snuff videos from Russia you’d see on 4chan and Instagram were state sponsored media meant to get money and blackmail. It’s likely the extreme Russian torture videos were state sponsored. It’s likely that Tulsi, Elon (who admitted in court this year he has a kink roleplay account on X of his toddler XAE, who he took to meet Erdogan and keeps kidnapped from his mom), JDolphin Vance, RFK Jr, Tucker “a demon scratched me in bed not my dogs and no Putin isnt blackmailing me to say this as a wink towards what im being blackmailed for” Carlson, and all the rest, have SERIOUS SERIOUS blackmail on them.

All at the expense of Russian people and enslaved people.

Hubi@feddit.org on 18 Dec 19:27 next collapse

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.

queermunist@lemmy.ml on 18 Dec 19:55 collapse

Gaza is a mass grave at this point.

HK65@sopuli.xyz on 18 Dec 21:17 collapse

It is, but not this big yet.

This is bigger than Gaza, not like the IDF is not trying to catch up.

queermunist@lemmy.ml on 18 Dec 22:34 collapse

Estimates are far higher than the official death toll - it’s hard to count bodies buried under the rubble.

blazeknave@lemmy.world on 19 Dec 00:57 collapse

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

queermunist@lemmy.ml on 19 Dec 02:34 collapse

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 on 19 Dec 08:42 collapse

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.

queermunist@lemmy.ml on 19 Dec 13:36 collapse

You don’t get to say “the worst since WWII” when there were other genocides that compared or were worse since WWII. It’s erasing history.

“Worst” is what I’m taking issue with.

blazeknave@lemmy.world on 19 Dec 18:53 next collapse

Okay, thanks for sharing the source of your feelings. Your actions are still to hijack any and everything to be a soapbox. If there’s any single one thing that can take this space, it’s another genocide in the middle east. Like dude, come on…

queermunist@lemmy.ml on 19 Dec 19:09 collapse

Hijacking the statement of “the worst since the Nazis” to say “literally no wtf” 🙄

TheFonz@lemmy.world on 19 Dec 19:03 next collapse

It seems in the end, the best at killing Arabs is other Arabs.

queermunist@lemmy.ml on 19 Dec 19:12 collapse

Cool racism dood

The Europeans colonizing Palestine sure are killing a lot of people. Also there were the million people who died in the Iraq war.

But those don’t count, I guess.

TheFonz@lemmy.world on 19 Dec 20:47 collapse

Did I say they don’t count?

LustyArgonianMana@lemmy.world on 20 Dec 09:37 collapse

He literally didn’t say that. You’re mad over a quote that doesn’t exist. He literally said “some of the worst.” I have seen video footage on BlueSky of the prisoners as they were executed and it is quite disturbing. “Like a machine,” to kill them en masse is pretty apropos of what I saw.

Do you think that’s okay? Do you think that’s NOT some of the worst mass murder to happen since WW2? If you think it’s an acceptable amount of murder, why?

Karyoplasma@discuss.tchncs.de on 18 Dec 19:32 next collapse

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

queermunist@lemmy.ml on 18 Dec 19:55 collapse

And currently stealing even more land!

Karyoplasma@discuss.tchncs.de on 18 Dec 19:59 collapse

Well, now Syria is weakened from the revolution. That is the best time to go and steal some land!

Valmond@lemmy.world on 18 Dec 20:26 next collapse

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@lemmy.ml on 18 Dec 22:36 collapse

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 on 19 Dec 08:22 collapse

Oh, I didn’t see that you’re an “ml”

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

queermunist@lemmy.ml on 19 Dec 13:38 collapse

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.

RunawayFixer@lemmy.world on 18 Dec 21:24 next collapse

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.

peoplebeproblems@midwest.social on 18 Dec 23:05 next collapse

Man, Mao’s policies got so many people killed that “only” 3-4m people died of famine.

He’s got an incredible kill count.

PalmTreeIsBestTree@lemmy.world on 19 Dec 11:47 next collapse

Stalin all ready had a high kill count before the Nazis started their extermination camps.

LustyArgonianMana@lemmy.world on 20 Dec 09:40 collapse

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@lemmy.ml on 19 Dec 00:43 collapse

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 on 19 Dec 05:42 collapse

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.

slaacaa@lemmy.world on 19 Dec 11:14 next collapse

Bad year for tankies

queermunist@lemmy.ml on 19 Dec 13:34 next collapse

Between 500,000 to one million were killed in Indonesia and Iraq. The fuck you mean they aren’t worse?

And the Palestinian genocide is at least within the same order of magnitude.

Why are you erasing them?

MaDMaX99@lemmy.zip on 20 Dec 08:02 collapse

Better a “tankie” than a faschie 😉

Telodzrum@lemmy.world on 18 Dec 21:25 next collapse

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@lemmy.ml on 18 Dec 22:37 next collapse

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 on 18 Dec 23:04 collapse

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

perestroika@lemm.ee on 19 Dec 12:07 next collapse

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.

jagged_circle@feddit.nl on 19 Dec 13:48 next collapse

Israel hasn’t killed over 100,000 yet. Gaza is a lot smaller than Syria or Europe.

queermunist@lemmy.ml on 19 Dec 14:02 collapse

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.

DankOfAmerica@reddthat.com on 19 Dec 14:13 next collapse

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.

john89@lemmy.ca on 19 Dec 14:36 next collapse

You must not know what the definition of “worst” means.

queermunist@lemmy.ml on 19 Dec 14:53 collapse

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.ca on 19 Dec 14:55 collapse

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@lemmy.ml on 19 Dec 15:14 collapse

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.ca on 19 Dec 15:34 collapse

If something is “the worst” then nothing worse happened

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

queermunist@lemmy.ml on 19 Dec 15:44 collapse

Well if they get to overstate then why can’t I? I’m just reflecting their own tone.

john89@lemmy.ca on 19 Dec 16:00 collapse

Don’t stoop to their level.

Reyali@lemm.ee on 19 Dec 15:27 next collapse

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@lemmy.ml on 19 Dec 15:31 collapse

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 on 19 Dec 20:59 collapse

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.

wewbull@feddit.uk on 19 Dec 15:51 next collapse

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@lemmy.ml on 19 Dec 19:02 collapse

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 on 20 Dec 12:15 collapse

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 on 20 Dec 13:37 collapse

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

[deleted] on 18 Dec 19:25 next collapse
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Furball@sh.itjust.works on 18 Dec 21:59 next collapse

I feel bad for people like you sometimes. I promise you the republicans are not going to create mass graves with up to 500,000 dead

SelfProgrammed@lemmy.today on 18 Dec 22:36 next collapse

I would much rather be surrounded by the people you’re surrounded by than keep hearing those exact promises out of the people I’m surrounded by.

Infynis@midwest.social on 18 Dec 23:40 next collapse

I think we can all agree (at least I hope) that any amount of genocide is bad

NaibofTabr@infosec.pub on 19 Dec 04:18 next collapse

Robert Kennedy wants to bring back Polio.

The Trump presidency will be littered with corpses.

jagged_circle@feddit.nl on 19 Dec 13:53 collapse

Trump killed hundreds of thousands in his last presidency. He might break it this time if you combine both

LustyArgonianMana@lemmy.world on 20 Dec 10:02 collapse

700k died because of Trump’s COVID policies. Including the bleach and ivermectin thing. It was so prevalent for him to kill his followers, a subreddit was made called the Herman Cain Award.

Now, Trump wants to traffick/“deport” 25mil Latinos, majority Native American, Christian, and Catholic group. A real attack on Christianity and I haven’t heard a single Christian care. And he wanted to be able to traffick them out of the Bahamas to countries they didn’t originate from, until the Bahamas said no recently.

fxomt@lemm.ee on 19 Dec 03:05 collapse

Are americans just not able to not bring up US politics in articles literally unrelated in any way? I’m pretty sure massacres, concentration camps, kidnappings, child soldiers, rapes, and ethnic cleansings are a little worse than trump’s 4 year term.

All of that, just for wanting freedom and democracy. But it seems you people have a persecution fetish. Kinky.

PS: I don’t support republicans, they are fascists, and i’m not saying that trump’s term will be all fine and dandy, but it doesn’t even compare to this.

[deleted] on 18 Dec 21:03 next collapse
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Mrkawfee@lemmy.world on 18 Dec 23:47 next collapse

Only brown people can be Nazis

fxomt@lemm.ee on 19 Dec 02:09 next collapse

No one was saying that?

I’m arab and even everyone that i know agrees the Ba’athists are straight up arab fascists.

Mrkawfee@lemmy.world on 19 Dec 08:02 collapse

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.

fxomt@lemm.ee on 19 Dec 08:28 collapse

Lmao, I literally never said that. I hate all the Arab dynasties just as much as Bashar, if not more. and Sisi is a moron.

Quit your whataboutism. Assad is bad. Dictators are bad, no matter if they are pro or anti US.

Mrkawfee@lemmy.world on 19 Dec 11:54 collapse

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.

fxomt@lemm.ee on 19 Dec 12:00 collapse

Sisi and king Abdullah (i assume that is “king tomato”) are morons, but they’re not even as close to the monster that is Assad. also, most westerners probably have a shallow understanding of middle eastern politics, and only knew Assad by name. but after the revolution, the horrors of his regime are finally becoming known globally. This is huge for everyone, especially for Syrians and us Arabs.

Don’t try to sympathize with monsters, dude.

Mrkawfee@lemmy.world on 19 Dec 12:39 collapse

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.

fxomt@lemm.ee on 19 Dec 12:53 collapse

Boy, you must be an Olympic champion at jumping to conclusions.

Sisi is evil and king Abdullah is a moron. there, better? but they haven’t committed crimes against humanity as bad as Bashar. They are tyrants. I’ll give you an example of another Pro-US tyrant who is evil. Mohammed bin Salman. I fucking hate his guts, not as much as Bashar, but i still want him gone. He has terrorized Saudi Arabia and drained our country and allocated it for himself and his megaprojects, and don’t even get me started on his human rights violations.

Literally where did I ever praise Jolani? I didn’t even bring him up. and where did I say that he should be integrated into the west? i don’t live in the west, i don’t care if he is integrated or not. fuck him, he can’t wash away his history with al-qaeda. But even he isn’t as bad as Bashar. that should tell you something about how evil Bashar actually is.

It may be a surprise to you, but have you considered that multiple things can be bad at once?

FantasticDonkey@reddthat.com on 19 Dec 10:09 collapse

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.

fxomt@lemm.ee on 19 Dec 10:29 collapse

Jail would be a mercy for those bastards. Fuck anyone who supports any dictator here.

feedum_sneedson@lemmy.world on 19 Dec 06:29 next collapse

oh dear

vga@sopuli.xyz on 19 Dec 13:04 next collapse

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”.

ohitsbreadley@discuss.tchncs.de on 19 Dec 13:15 next collapse

Bog standard totalitarianism. Not socialism.

vga@sopuli.xyz on 19 Dec 15:35 collapse

Potato, potahto.

CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org on 20 Dec 20:28 collapse

There’s plenty of market-oriented or just straight-up elitist totalitarians to go around.

Duke_Nukem_1990@feddit.org on 19 Dec 14:44 next collapse

Socialism is when death machine 🤡🤡🤡

recreationalcatheter@lemm.ee on 19 Dec 17:40 collapse

Yea, but it’s different because it’s owned by the people collectively 🤡🤡🤡

fxomt@lemm.ee on 19 Dec 15:18 collapse

The Ba’ath Party is as socialist as the nazi party. Hint: not at all.

Genuinely curious, though. Socialism is when the workers own the means of production; How would that cause genocide in your opinion?

vga@sopuli.xyz on 19 Dec 15:33 collapse

Socialism is when the workers own the means of production; How would that cause genocide in your opinion?

What do you mean, “would”?

fxomt@lemm.ee on 19 Dec 15:44 collapse

You implied that socialism kills. How?

Perhaps you meant authoritarianism?

ohitsbreadley@discuss.tchncs.de on 19 Dec 18:32 collapse

I’m on-side with socialism - but to be fair, most of the real world examples that call/called themselves socialist do have a pretty bad track record of descending into totalitarianism/authoritarianism.

fxomt@lemm.ee on 19 Dec 18:35 next collapse

Yup, but those are intentional. That’s how an ML state functions. That’s why Marxism Leninism is a bad idea.

Tja@programming.dev on 19 Dec 18:36 collapse

Most of western European governments are democratic socialist for like 50% of the time.

BeMoreCareful@lemmy.world on 19 Dec 13:54 next collapse

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.ca on 19 Dec 14:34 collapse

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.

geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml on 19 Dec 19:33 next collapse

Has the US investigator seen this yet?

‘All the cemeteries are full’: Palestinians buried in a mass grave in Gaza

<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/1935a092-c306-48f2-8eca-1c9d297ff96c.jpeg">

barsoap@lemm.ee on 20 Dec 09:51 next collapse

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 on 20 Dec 10:54 next collapse

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.

Doorbook@lemmy.world on 20 Dec 10:55 next collapse

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

barsoap@lemm.ee on 20 Dec 13:25 collapse

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.

CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org on 20 Dec 20:30 collapse

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.

prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 20 Dec 13:35 collapse

Both things can be bad.

geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml on 20 Dec 18:42 collapse

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.

Blackmist@feddit.uk on 20 Dec 11:37 next collapse

Since the Nazis? Cambodian genocide doesn’t even get a look in, eh?

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_genocide

barsoap@lemm.ee on 20 Dec 16:41 next collapse

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.

CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org on 20 Dec 20:29 collapse

Or ISIS, literally in the same UN-recognised borders at the same time.

I’m gonna chalk it up to this guy being a lawyer prosecuting a case.

kreskin@lemmy.world on 21 Dec 08:06 collapse

Hard to say if they Palestinian holocaust when the zionists wont allow people to be recovered from the rubble, use mass graves, and have been clearing rubble and not adding to the body count at all. They are hiding the numbers. Even hiding as much as possible its still about 50k.