Dear Leaders of the World

Dear leaders of the world,

I couldn't sleep last night. See, I had just watched Channel 4's "Syria's Disappeared" and it haunted me. I think it will haunt me for as long as I live. The graphic images that coloured my television screen were seared into the back of my mind. They are burned into the back of my mind; it was the last thing I saw before I fell asleep, it was what jerked me awake at 3am as I cried into my pillow, too afraid to look in the shadows because all I was seeing was battered bodies and tortured souls, it was the first thing I saw when I awoke in the morning to live another day in this heartless world.

It was a testimony to the slaughterhouse that was once called Syria. The Syrian war; a conflict that has broiled and raged on for seven years longer than it should have, claiming thousands upon thousands of lives and chaining over 200 000 in the silent dungeons of detention centres before having them mercilessly butchered. Tortured isn't even the word. What I saw last night wasn't torture; it was pure, unadulterated, unrestrained horror and destruction unleashed upon a nation for whom death would be a kinder fate. As one victim put it, it is a level of abuse that "the human brain can't even picture". I have to agree. Because when he spoke of his traumatic experience, I felt physically ill. My mind went blank because trying to imagine the suffering he went through under this criminally barbaric regime, wasn't something I could cope with. I don't know how it is something that he can cope with.

And then there are the damning photos. The photographic evidence smuggled out of Syria by a defector, code-named "Caesar", of the 53 275 corpses he was forced to photograph as evidence of execution. The photos that are there when I close my eyes, who are robbing me of my sanity while they dance at the forefront of my mind. Photos that he risked his life to make copies of and show the Western world, in the desperate hope of saving his people who disappear by the second, enslaved to a regime designed to be a death machine. These are the photos - disturbing, chilling, haunting images of electrocuted bodies, starved children, and mutilated corpses...gouged out eyes, burn marks that scream of unspeakable pain, and frozen looks of sheer terror as they succumb to death's mercy - that is the documented evidence currently being used to build a case against the Syrian government who opened the doors of hell on its own people. Because there is no doubt that it is hell. The scenes that flashed in front of my eyes tell the story of hell on earth.

I was sixteen when I was reading about the holocaust; when I saw pictures of concentration camps and piles of corpses in textbooks and I remember thinking "how could one person be so evil to instigate outright genocide, and how can hundreds of people be so inhumane to follow it through". I remember thinking "how did the world sit back and let this happen". They say humans learn from the past. I say history is repeating itself. I'd go as far as to say that we are writing a history that is so much worse. It used to be an abstract idea, the idea of "war". It was always a distant concept in my mind. It's hard to connect with something that happened so long ago, sitting in a classroom with only newspaper articles and witness accounts and ancient photographs to go by. It's different to be witnessing war in real time. It's something else entirely to know that on the other side of the world, innocent people are experiencing - on an infinitely more painful, terrifying, barbaric scale - what I experienced a fraction of in a documentary. It is something else entirely to know that we are the world, 76 years later, sitting back and letting the massacre of a nation go unpunished. Because the textbooks have come to life. There are the eerily familiar photographs, and heartbreaking witness accounts and the bones and carnage and bodies and chaos that are more nightmare than reality. We have been watching a human genocide unfold for the last seven years and we haven't done a damn thing.

Dear leaders of the world: 

you have failed the people of Syria.

And I can't comprehend it. I can't comprehend how humans are capable of inflicting such ruthless torture and wreaking sheer destruction. How can you unleash unimaginable horrors on your own people, be so utterly cruel and merciless and nonchalant about taking a life that isn't yours to take, and sleep at night with their blood on your hands. Tell me how you do it. Tell me how your conscience is wiped clean when it should be tainted with the blood of innocent men and the screams of their wild fear as you drag them to the depths of hell and back. Tell me how you shut out their cries for mercy as you break their bones and break their bodies and shatter their minds with a taste of pain so incomprehensible it makes the rest of us speechless. And tell me how you get away with it. How no one stops you, how no one cares about the blood that spills from your fingertips and into the streets and splashes against the walls, staining the country red with nothing but the echoes of silent screams and defiant resilience.

The credits began to roll and I was filled with an overwhelming sense of helplessness and grief for these people whose pain I felt as my own. I was frustrated and confused and so angry at the ugly, ugly world we now live in. But beyond that, I was unbearably sad. I felt hollowed out and empty, and I had no outlet so I sat on the floor and sobbed my heart out until there were no tears left, and I begged for peace. I prayed for justice. I pray that one day, the monsters who call themselves human but who are anything but, who have a heart carved of metal and stone, who are thirsty for blood and drunk on power, I pray that they are held accountable for every life that is on their hands, for every soul they have punished horrifically for simply existing, whose blood stains their fingers and colours their conscience red. And I also pray that the people who sat back and did nothing to intervene, who turned a blind eye and felt nothing when they should have felt everything, I pray that they feel the pain of every single Syrian victim that has suffered because of their ignorance and failure to act.

I almost regret watching it. But what I felt last night, the chilling sensation that rocked me to my core and the numbing pain at witnessing the true horrors that are like a living, waking nightmare, reminded me that humanity is a gift. It made me realise that there is no peace, no justice, no humanity left in this cruel, cruel world. But some of us feel our hearts slowly splinter apart at the brutal, inhumane crimes against those caught up in something so much bigger than them, and it reminds me that that little slice of humanity exists somewhere - it is a drop in an ocean and it is a gift.

|   This post comes off the back of Channel 4's documentary "Syria's Disappeared: Building the case against Assad" which tells the shocking, gritty, disturbing reality of thousands of detainees who have gone missing since the start of the Syrian war and who have been tortured to death - or are simply awaiting their turn.

I urge you to watch it. It is a brutal, brutal watch, and it will scar you beyond imagination, but it will live as a constant reminder of what truly lies out there. It will make you aware of the war crimes that the rest of the world are choosing to ignore. It will make you more human as the weight of that reality sinks in. I wish that every world leader and every human being on this planet could watch it - that they would wake up and use their power to make this inhumane world a better place. I will never forget this programme for as long as I live; I hope it drives me to always remember the injustice that the human race faces and how easy it is to destroy fragile human life. I hope it makes me more selfless and compassionate and connected to the millions of people suffering a cruel fate that they don't deserve. Stay educated, stay brave, and stay inspired by these people who are still able to show an unparalleled level of patience, strength and bravery in the fight for freedom and justice.

If you can't stomach the graphic nature of the programme, or if you can and/or have, and want more information on the man who is key to saving Syria's people, and his remarkable, dangerous journey in his effort to bring about the fall of the totalitarian regime, I ask you to read this article: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/01/they-were-torturing-to-kill-inside-syrias-death-machine-caesar