Fake photos, real extermination
ARE children in Aleppo who are wounded and come out from under rubble innate actors? Has Aleppo become a location for filming historical movies about world wars and destroyed cities? Is all this rubble, bombings, human cries and deaths a Hollywood-style special effect? Some people are inclined to believe that all news about Aleppo is fake, and that Damascus, Tehran and Moscow are telling the truth about the Syrian city.
Asked about Syrian girl Bana Al-Abed and her mother’s tweets that went viral as a daily documentation of horrors in Aleppo under Russian and regime airstrikes, Syrian President Bashar Assad said: “They are just kind of propaganda.”
Earlier, he also dismissed photos of Aleppobased boy Omran Daqneesh, and all photos of imprisoned Syrians and bombings, as fabricated. Such a regime did not feel ashamed when it let its UN Ambassador Bashar Al-Jaafari promote photos taken in Iraq as if they were taken in Aleppo.
Since the revolution began, the Syrian people have been encountered with the power of photos. At times they have been prevented from speaking to independent media to convey their suffering. At other times, they have been accused of fabricating tales of their suffering. As a result, Syrians had no choice but to bring out the reality of their suffering and deaths by taking pictures with their mobile phones.
The fact that there have been fake photos has not changed the reality. The regime said either it rules or destroys the country — that is exactly what happened with the destruction and fall of Aleppo.
The truth of the extermination of the city and its people has exceeded all limits of deceit and lying practiced by the regime and its Russian and Iranian allies. What really happened in Aleppo in recent days was that a coalition of criminal leaders was able to win on both levels: Photos and reality. This killer alliance won the battle of images while killing Syrians, and the whole world was its accomplice.
The Bellingcat website, which specializes in fact-finding about current events using opensource information, investigated the account of Al-Abed and her mother, who posts most of the tweets. After comparing what was written and the facts, the site concluded that the account is real.
Al-Abed and her mother have been the target of a fierce campaign by the Russian and Syrian regimes, which accuse them of lying. But do we really need to prove that Al- Abed is real, which, in fact, she is? Do we still have doubts that the Assad regime destroyed Aleppo and annihilated its people?
The whole world connived with the regime, Russia and Iran, which said they were killing terrorists. It believed them, and overlooked Al-Abed’s tweets and all images of death received from Aleppo, as if this world loves criminals and no image could change that love, whatever happens.
During previous massacres in Grozny, Srebrenica and Rwanda, images used to take longer to be published. The case is different in Aleppo; we get live photos and videos of children discovering the death of their parents, or being pulled out from rubble.
Fake photos, which do exist, are no longer the issue. Aleppo’s reality goes beyond that. The destruction of the city and the killing of its people means the world’s acceptance that the strong has the right to kill. Those who exploit some photos to claim that the truth is lost are only granting the strong a warrant for more killings. Diana Moukalled is a veteran journalist in traditional and new media. She is also a columnist and freelance documentary producer. She can be reached on Twitter @dianamoukalled.