Caesar wins Nuremberg Human Rights Award
Ken Roth, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch, explains the significance of the Caesar photographs:
One irony of the Syrian war is that while the Assad government flouts the most basic rules of international humanitarian law, it never openly admits doing so. It denies that it barrel bombs or gasses civilians. It pretends that it lets necessities reach people in besieged areas. And it bars independent access to the worst of its detention facilities where the bulk of the torture and execution takes place.
It is in that context of denial that the Caesar photos are so important. No one seeing the photographs of more than six thousand brutalized corpses can deny that something utterly inhumane has been taking place inside that closed prison system. Survivors can describe that hell on earth, but the photographs speak with an unimpeachable directness that compels us to understand the utter cruelty of the Syrian detention system.
Roth’s full remarks merit reading. I was honoured last week that my documentary, ‘Syria’s Disappeared: The Case Against Assad’ (which I co-produced with director Sara Afshar), was screened in Courtroom 600 in Nuremberg, where the Nuremberg Trials took place. The film played in the same spot where images from the Holocaust were presented to the courtroom over 70 years ago. This launched the programme leading up to the presentation of the award to Caesar for his courage in delivering essential evidence to the outside world. His courageous act deserves more than awards. It demands action to prevent the continuing deaths in detention and to bring the perpetrators to justice.