Ivana Bacik (Independent)
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I thank the witnesses for their presentations. I am concerned that we did not hear from any of the witnesses any condemnation of the brutal regime of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria. Our Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has briefed us on the fact that Assad has sought to undermine every effort at reaching a negotiated resolution to the conflict since 2011. While we may acknowledge the effect of sanctions on civilian populations, there is a reason sanctions have been imposed against the Syrian Government, and that is the recognition of the brutality of the Assad regime. We will hear later from Robin Yassin-Kassab about his experience and writing on Syria.

I would like to put to the witnesses some of the issues in which the Assad regime, together with its Russian Government allies, has been engaged. We put these issues to the Russian ambassador when he was before the committee recently. More than 900,000 Syrian civilians are under siege and hundreds of thousands are in eastern Aleppo which is being bombarded by Syrian Government forces, that is, by Assad's forces backed by Russian allies. We know from Médecins sans Frontières, the humanitarian charity, that it has 45 tonnes of medical supplies this week waiting to enter eastern Aleppo but it cannot reach the desperate civilian population there. I have spoken to people who have family in eastern Aleppo and we have eye witness accounts from Médecins sans Frontières of the suffering of the population there. We see and hear about the suffering, the civilian deaths and the deaths of children. We have seen attacks on hospitals. Physicians for Human Rights says that between March 2011 and May 2016, there were 373 attacks on health facilities in Syria. The doctors have spoken of this but the vast majority of these attacks were carried out by Syrian Government, the Assad regime and its allies. On 19 September 2016, there was an aerial attack on a United Nations aid convoy which is the subject of an international investigation. It was a humanitarian convoy targeted by the regime and its allies. On 10 August there were accounts of chlorine gas attacks by the regime.

I am concerned that we have not heard from the witnesses an attack or any sort of critique of the Assad regime. I am very concerned that the first speaker made the comment that there is no moderate opposition in Syria. Even the Russian ambassador acknowledged to us that the Russian Government is seeking to conduct local peace agreements and has conducted several with moderate opposition groups through Syria. All of us utterly condemn ISIS or Daesh and its appalling and brutal attacks on civilian populations. I absolutely agree with colleagues on that. We are very conscious of the Yazidi population. We are absolutely clear on that. We condemn ISIS outright because it has brutalised the civilian population. We also need to be clear about the attacks by the Syrian Government on civilians and about the fact the Syrian Government has resisted peace negotiations too.

I have a question for the Grand Mufti. We have heard condemnation from the Irish Syria Solidarity Movement of the Grand Mufti's speech in 2011. I watched the video of his speech on Syrian television on 9 October 2011 in which he says, "I say to all of Europe and to the US: We will prepare martyrdom seekers who are already among you." That was relating to the bombing of Syria and Lebanon. The Grand Mufti has spoken about that. He has had invitations withdrawn by other foundations following that speech. I am very concerned that it is the sort of speech that can inflame situations. It did not sound to me like a peaceful speech.

All of us here want to see peace in Syria. We would all support any genuine efforts to bring about peace in Syria. We have put that to the Russian ambassador and we will put it to anyone who comes before us. We want to see an end to the suffering of the civilian population in Syria, given that 13.5 million Syrian people are now in need of humanitarian assistance. It is devastating to see what was a developed, secular and diverse country falling into this horrible chaos. We also need to acknowledge the responsibility and where that lies. It lies very clearly with the Syrian regime.