Thursday, December 24, 2015

The reportage of Liz Sly

From Andrey: "With great interest I’m following your Angry Arab blog representing the Middle Eastern native touch over the Western reporting on Syria. I remember you used to repeatedly condemn the WP ME reporter Liz Sly for her biased and one-sided articles fueling inter-sectarian conflicts and misunderstanding in the wounded region. Last week she released another sample of this kind: As you see, being based on unconfirmed and unclear sources in Turkey, she reports that the Russian air strikes are causing dramatic infrastructure damages and civilian losses in Syria. She tries to add some confidence referring to the UN Humanitarian Affairs officials. As a matter of fact, she used the following UN OCHA release dated Dec7, 2015 by  the United Nations Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Kyung-wha Kang. While lacking almost all details (to say nothing about any indication on the Russian air strikes as the source of the problem) the latter does not conceal that the information came from Turkish relief agency AFAD and the Kilis Governorate authorities (parties, which could be interested in discrediting the Russian counter-terrorist operation due to the well-known factors). The UN Humanitarian Chief, Stephen O’Brien, who has been visiting Damascus on Dec 12-14, in his official statementat the end of the trip did not say a single word about Russian operation in the context of humanitarian crisis in Syria. Another, indirect prove of the false allegation about “Russians bombing the hospitals in Syria” is that the notorious “human rights defender” Joshua Foust feels deeply frustrated about the “lack of reaction” of Doctors Without Borders on the “Russian war crimes” comparing to the US bombing of a hospital in Kunduz. It seemingly does not occur to him that Doctors Without Borders are simply perfectly aware that no hospitals were being bombed by the Russian forces in Syria, so there is nothing to cry about.
Please take note that the latest report of OCHA to the UN Security Council (Dec 21) does not contain any point of humanitarian concern regarding the Russian counter-terrorist operation neither."