Viken Vartanian

The “brave” Assad ran away to Putin. Where will Putin run away? This year's Human Rights Day is marked by heartbreaking images of Syrian prisons and torture chambers, which were opened after Assad ran away. People have been humiliated there for many years. Men and women. They were beaten, tortured, raped. Thousands upon thousands of people have passed through this violence factory. For decades, the Assad regime has relied solely on violence. And this is what all Putin-backed regimes look like. We have seen these types of prisons, torture chambers, unspeakable violence, humiliation, beating, torture, rape, and other crimes on our territory in every location occupied by Russian invaders. Russia is a prison state and it can only keep hold of someone else’s stolen land by putting its prisons and torture chambers there. Since the beginning of the Russian occupation, tanks have been followed by repression and torture. We first saw it on our land in Crimea in 2014, when Russian occupation resulted in repression of the indigenous people, Ukraine's largest Muslim community, the Crimean Tatars, as well as journalists and political figures. Then Russia continued its horrific human rights violations in the occupied Donbas, including the notorious Izolyatsia prison. Since February 2022, Russia has expanded these practices to the rest of the occupied territories. Atrocities have increased in scope and brutality. This is why we, as Ukrainians, feel so moved when we see Syrians walking out of Assad's prisons and torture chambers. Assad and Putin are more than just vassal and lord. They are accomplices in violence. Dictators like Assad cannot survive without dictators like Putin. And Putin will try to get a revenge for Assad’s fall. This is why we need unity and strength to confront regimes that only sow humiliation and leave nothing but suffering, pain, and ruins in their wake. By assisting Ukraine in its fight against Putin's dictatorship, the international community is assisting many other regions in restoring security and protection from violence. There must be justice for the horrific atrocities and human rights violations. In fact, Putin and Assad are the ones who deserve to be imprisoned, not the innocent people they have been imprisoning for years.