Imtiaz Sooliman – Gift ot the Givers’ on Syria as death toll rises
AI: Summary ©
Speaker 1 discusses the recent bombing in Syria and the ongoing conflict in Syria. He talks about the organization's focus on saving lives and saving lives without harming the people affected by the conflict. He also mentions the ongoing involvement of the conflict in other regions and the need for cooperation to prevent future crises.
AI: Summary ©
Welcome back. Founder of humanitarian and disaster relief
organization. Gift of the givers. MTS, Suleiman speaks with us via
Skype. Mister Suleman, thank you very much for joining us now. You
have personnel on the ground in Syria. What's the reaction been to
the latest bombing?
Have been through the Good evening. Sorry. Kabila, good
evening. I thought, sir, have been through this kind of disaster
since march 2011
nothing in Syria shocks them anymore. What shocks them is the
world's lataji to try to save those people who have been
affected, innocent people who've been born countless times in the
last seven years. And this is just another escalation. My teams are
too far from the affected area. Our hospital is in a place called
darqush, which is 360 kilometers away from Eastern Ghouta, and the
terrain and the road and the blockages and the bombing from
there to darqush is virtually impossible to reach. All they say
is we pray for our people. But this is nothing new. It's been
happening over and over again for the last seven years
now. You date back to as far as 2011 how's your organization
received in that country so far? And how are your relations with
the different warring factions there?
Well, we keep a very neutral
situation. We keep that in neutral with all the warrior sections,
because, given the nature of the war itself, get politically
involved, not for this war anymore, for anything, for that
better. In that area like that, there's continuous flux. People
keep, keep changing in the area where we are. So we, all we do is
we save life. People come to the hospital. We don't have which
group you belong to, where you come from, where you were
fighting. You bring your child, your wife, yourself, you come, we
treat you, and we send you out. Our only focus is to save life.
And why I say things change when we open up the hospital. At that
time, the civilians, it was in 2013
the civilians had moved. It was the only people in the area. There
were no soldiers. It was the civilians that protested, their
resolved, and all other troops had moved out. There was no army.
There was the civilians. A few months later, the free civil army
came into the area. They were in charge. A year or two later, it
was ISIS in the area. Thereafter, it was Nusa, and it keeps
changing, and we keep our same focus serve the people without
favor and save lives in that way, the sixth security and the safety
of hospital has been guaranteed, and the safety and security of our
of our personnel are guaranteed to the point that we've grown so
much, we see 14 to 15,000 patients a month
now, speaking of saving lives, this week's attack was in the
rebel health Syrian club of Eastern ghata. Are your personnel
in danger? Well,
they're not in that area. They are from that area, but we are in 360
kilometers away from that area, we're not in danger at all. Of
course, no third place in Syria is safe in the area that we we
operate quite a few times a army planes that try to bomb our
hospitals. In fact, when the South African team went across in 2013
they tried, on numerous occasions to bomb us in the hospital. If,
you're three years ago, a car was placed about a kilometer outside
the hospital. So the personnel are never safe in in where we are, or
anywhere else inside we are, because one of the primary targets
for us are hospitals, clinics, schools, supermarket for market,
the marketplaces, places of worship. Those are all target
bosses. So no hospital doctor, no guarantee safe. What we are
worried about inside Guta is a professor of the head of the
hospital in Arkush. Our professor is the head of the Medical
Council. He's been there for several years, and he is at first,
as are all the other medical personnel working with him. Inside
Guta, like
you mentioned, this has been going on for many years now. Is there
political will to save the people of Syria? No, there is no
political will. There never was, and there never will be. If there
was, well, then you could have for seven years. It can't take people
seven years to realize there's something crazy going on inside
the country where more than 15 million people have been
displaced, where people are massacred in every part of the
country, where people take ships and boats to go across to Europe,
and many of them drown on the way, and more than a million people
have lost their lives. So many have been tortured, so many have
been imprisoned. It can't take the world seven years to realize that
something is seriously wrong if you take the situation and
cooperate, it to Bosnia. What in months, the international
community interacted and intervened. There was a no flying
zone, there was an arms embargo, there were safe havens. There were
eight agencies from everywhere in the world. Inside those, world
media was inside Bosnia, and it was stopped within three years, if
you go inside.
Syria, you don't see anything of the sort compared to what happened
in Bosnia. So the conclusion is, let's look the other way and let
the people of Syria be destroyed. We'll have to leave it there.
Mister Suleman, thank you very much for joining us on ACBC news.
That was a gift of the givers. Founder MTS. Suleiman, joining us
for the latest in Syria, we'll have more.