Damascus, Aug. 21 (SANA) Minister of Economy and Industry Nidal al-Shaar said on Friday that the anniversary of the Ghouta massacre, committed by the deposed regime in 2013 using internationally banned sarin gas, is “a wound in Syria’s memory and humanity’s conscience,” stressing that recovery and building the future do not mean forgetting or erasing the truth.
In a post on Facebook, al-Shaar stressed the need to document crimes and keep memory alive so future generations can know what happened—not to perpetuate hatred, but to build a country that will not allow such crimes to recur.
“To the children of Ghouta who left before they could grow up, to the mothers and fathers who reached out to their children and could not give them one last breath, to everyone who breathed their last because a regime decided—in one of the darkest moments in Syria’s history—to turn air from a source of life into a tool of death,” al-Shaar wrote.
“We cannot bring you back to life, but we can build a country worthy of your memory,” he added.
Al-Shaar said Syria needs to forgive without forgetting, reconcile without abandoning justice, and move toward the future without turning its back on its victims.
“There will be no true new Syria if Ghouta massacre can be forgotten. It is not a page we turn in our history; it is a pledge that we will not allow unjust history to repeat itself,” he said.
On Aug. 21, 2013, the deposed regime launched a sarin gas attack on the Damascus suburbs of Eastern and Western Ghouta, killing more than 1,400 civilians, including 200 children and women, and injuring thousands with suffocation and poisoning, in one of the most horrific crimes committed against Syrians.
Kh.A / H.H
