The Free

Photo essay- Genocide Ignored: ‘Four Years of Turkish Occupation of Afrin’

By:Managing Editor – Syrian Democratic Times

Why aren’t there more news media reports about the situation in Afrin? Turkey does not allow reporters into the Afrin region, unless they are strictly managed and do not stray from their official Turkish handlers.

Ethnic cleansing was the goal of the Turkish invasion,. Turkey has waged a long-term war against ethnic Kurds, and the invasion of Afrin was part of that campaign. Prior to the invasion, the inhabitants of the region identifying as Kurdish was over 95 percent. Today, that number is less than 20 percent, according to the Human Rights Organization of Afrin. The Kurds who remain are subject to harassment and brutality at the hands of the Turkish authorities and the Turkish-backed militia members.

#TurkeyOutOfEfrîn

***Sinam Sherkany Mohamad is the Co-Chair of the US Mission of the Syrian Democratic Council. She is a Kurdish woman from Afrin, Syria.***

In early 2018, the Turkish military invaded Afrin. The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) came to the defense of the people there in a fierce and bloody struggle, but the region fell to the advanced weaponry and air power of the Turkish military on March 18, 2018. The Turkish government now occupies the region, flying the Turkish flag and changing signs and placenames to the Turkish language, forcing schoolchildren to learn Turkish, and pasting Turkish President Erdogan’s picture in public places – patrolled by Turkish-backed militias calling themselves the “Syrian National Army.”

More than 300,000 people have fled the region of Afrin, Syria, since March 2018. Most are living as internally-displaced persons (IDPs) elsewhere in Syria. About 20 percent have been able to return to check on their homes. They have found that the homes have been looted of electronics, furniture, decorations, and anything of value. In many cases, the homes have been sold or otherwise appropriated by the occupying militia members.

One of the untold stories of Afrin is the resettlements efforts, led by the Turkish overseers and Turkish-backed militias. There have been about 400,000 people resettled into Afrin in the past four years who are not the original inhabitants. Many of these are the families of the militias who are patrolling the region, but they also include other people that Turkey didn’t want. It includes migrants from other parts of Syria who fled from Assad-government-controlled areas, such as Ghouta. It also includes 500 families of Palestinian origin who had been living in Syria.

The theft of anything of value continues in Afrin. More than 50 separate militias are operating in Afrin. Their income over the past four years has come from the theft and reselling of goods from abandoned stores, anything of value they can find in homes, the agricultural goods they can appropriate, the equipment from factories and places of business, and the abduction and ransom of the people themselves. Lately, a militia group was also found to be producing and selling the narcotic captagon in order to pay its members and fund its operations.

Caitlin Johnstone: Defending the Lies of Psychological War/ Are we Happy to be Conned?

April 7, 2022 By Caitlin Johnstone CaitlinJohnstone.com

This is the stage of narrative control where the public is trained to defend their government’s right to commit psychological warfare, even when it’s openly based on outright lies.

NBC News has a report out citing multiple anonymous U.S. officials, humorously titled “In a break with the past, U.S. is using intel to fight an info war with Russia, even when the intel isn’t rock solid.“

The officials say the Biden administration has been rapidly pushing out “intelligence” about Moscow’s plans in Ukraine that is “low-confidence” or “based more on analysis than hard evidence” or even just plain false, in order to fight an information war against Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The report says that toward this end the U.S. government has deliberately circulated false or poorly evidenced claims about impending chemical weapons attacks, about Russian plans to orchestrate a false flag attack in the Donbass to justify an invasion, about Putin’s advisers misinforming him and about Russia seeking arms supplies from China.

Psyops in the U.S. targeting the public used to be illegal, even though the way they got around it was to plant stories in the foreign press. But over the last five years beginning with Russiagate & now Ukraine, it is clear that U.S. public is fair game: https://t.co/gcEWoCZbkB
— Ajamu Baraka (@ajamubaraka) April 6, 2022

Pruebas de 100% que los nazis ucranianos cometieron la masacre de Bucha

¿Qué pasó en Bucha? Escenas de una masacre escenificada

Abr 2022, 2:03 pm.Misionverdad.com

Si bien la ciudad de Bucha, en Ucrania, está copando la agenda mediática corporativa estadounidense y europea con el objeto de criminalizar a Rusia de haber asesinado a mansalva supuestamente a más de 300 civiles, la falta de evidencias de esta versión da cuenta de que el ejército ruso nada tiene que ver con ello.

Luego de que este fin de semana el régimen de Volodímir Zelenski publicara imágenes en el que se muestran cadáveres presuntamente asesinados por el ejército ruso en medio de las calles y en fosas comunes de Bucha, se han alzado las voces de que Rusia debería ser juzgado internacionalmente por crímenes de guerra.

Corresponsales de Reuters afirmaron haber visto cadáveres en el suelo de las calles, amarrados de manos y pies, habiendo sido ajusticiados.

El ministro de Relaciones Exteriores ucraniano Dmytro Kuleba publicó en inglés una serie de tuits para mostrar las fotos y pedir al G7 la emisión de más “sanciones” contra la Federación Rusa, llamando a la escena una “masacre” deliberada por parte del Kremlin. También clamó por mayor ayuda militar internacionales: “Tanques, aviones de combate, sistemas de defensa antiaérea. Proporciónenlos DE INMEDIATO”.

Bucha massacre was deliberate. Russians aim to eliminate as many Ukrainians as they can. We must stop them and kick them out. I demand new devastating G7 sanctions NOW:

-Oil, gas, coal embargo
-Close all ports to Russian vessels and goods
-Disconnect all Russian banks from SWIFT pic.twitter.com/oZkCAETCQp
— Dmytro Kuleba (@DmytroKuleba) April 3, 2022

Por su parte, el ministro de Relaciones Exteriores ruso, Serguéi Lavrov, respondió:

“Otro ataque de falsificaciones se lanzó en la ciudad de Bucha, región de Kiev, luego de que los militares rusos salieron de allí de acuerdo con los planes y acuerdos alcanzados. Unos días después, allí fue organizada una escenificación que van difundiendo por todos los canales y todas las redes sociales los representantes ucranianos y sus patrocinadores occidentales”.

El Ministerio de Defensa lanzó un comunicado con el que rechaza las acusaciones de Kiev:

“Todas las fotos y videos publicados por el régimen de Kiev que supuestamente atestiguan algunos ‘crímenes’ cometidos por militares rusos en la ciudad de Bucha, en la región de Kiev, son una nueva provocación.

“Mientras esta localidad estaba bajo control de las Fuerzas Armadas rusas, ningún residente local fue víctima de acciones violentas. Los militares rusos entregaron a la población civil de la región de Kiev 452 toneladas de ayuda humanitaria.

“Durante todo el período que la ciudad estuvo bajo el control de las FF.AA. de Rusia y más aún después, los habitantes locales se movieron libremente por la ciudad de Bucha y utilizaron los teléfonos móviles.

“Las salidas de la ciudad de Bucha no fueron bloqueadas. Todos los residentes locales tenían la oportunidad de salir libremente de la localidad en dirección norte, incluso hacia Bielorrusia. Al mismo tiempo, al sur de la ciudad, incluidas las zonas residenciales de las afueras, fueron bombardeadas las 24 horas por las tropas ucranianas con artillería de gran calibre, tanques y lanzacohetes múltiples.

“Queremos señalar que todos los militares rusos abandonaron Bucha el 30 de marzo, un día después de la ronda de negociaciones de paz entre Rusia y Ucrania en Turquía.

“Más aun, el 31 de marzo, el propio alcalde de la localidad, Anatoli Fedoruk, no solo confirmó en su videomensaje que en la ciudad no quedaban militares rusos y ni siquiera hizo mención alguna sobre residentes locales con las manos atadas, fusilados en las calles.

“Por lo tanto, no es de extrañar que todas las así llamadas ‘pruebas de los crímenes’ en Bucha aparecieran solo al cuarto día, cuando los efectivos del Servicio de Seguridad de Ucrania y los representantes de la televisión ucraniana llegaron a la ciudad.

“Resulta especialmente preocupante el hecho de que ninguno de los cuerpos cuyas imágenes fueron publicadas por Kiev parecía sufrir de rígor mortis, carecían de la característica ausencia de color propia de un cadáver y no estaban manchados de sangre coagulada.

“Todo esto confirma irrefutablemente que las fotos y videos de Bucha son otra producción del régimen de Kiev para los medios occidentales, como fue el caso del hospital de maternidad de la ciudad de Mariúpol”.

100% Proof emerging that Ukrainian Nazis carried out the Bucha massacre: updates

Staged Massacre in Bucha

April 8, 2022— Orinoco Tribune, Waronfakes.com/bucha/ and Misionverdad.com

The city of Bucha, in Ukraine, has recently come to the attention of the US and EU corporate media, for the purpose of criminalizing Russia for the supposed assassination of 300 civilians.

However, proof has now emerged that it was not the Russians and that it must have been done by elements of the notorious nazi Azov Batallion and/or the Territorial Defense of the Ukrainian military

After the Ukronazi regime of Volodimir Zelensky published images depicting corpses in Bucha, supposedly killed by the Russian military, in the middle of the street and in mass graves, calls have been issued for Russia to be tried internationally for war crimes.

The bodies were rapidly stuffed into rubbish bags and 280 dumped in a mass grave by the Ukrainian military. None had rigor mortis or the green or red skin apparent after 24 hours death.

Reuters correspondents confirmed that they had seen bodies strewn in the streets, with their hands and feet tied, as if they had been arrested.

The Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Relations Dmytro Kuleba posted a series of tweets in English with the images, and requests for the G7 countries to roll out even more “sanctions” against the Russian Federation.