Syrians must remain objective: Baghdad University UNESCO Chair
DUHOK, Iraq (North Press) – On Sunday, president of the UNESCO Chair on Genocide Prevention Studies at the University of Baghdad Dr. Salah al-Jabri sent a message to Syrian activists documenting violations in their war-torn country.
Al-Jabri said in an interview with North Press, “The methods that Syrians must utilize during documenting are the scientific and legal ones. It’s better not to deal with these issues in a way that fights violence with violence, or establishes a sectarian feud against a previous sectarian feud in return for a previous sectarian feud because it has committed genocide.”
Al-Jabri, who lectured in several conferences on documenting genocide at the universities of Baghdad and Duhok, added, “We must be careful in dealing with this issue, we must be objective by approaching the issue according to an informed scientific basis.”
He expressed his belief that the lack of professionalism in documenting the violations exacerbates the problem and does not solve it, “Thus, we have not solved a problem. On the contrary, we exacerbated it.”
“Then we get rid of all the tragic personal and emotional repercussions, experienced by the individual who may conflate them with the subject at hand, and thus try to justify the elimination of another person because he has experienced the same tragedy,” he said.
Al-Jabri stressed that the United Nations and UNESCO are closely following the Iraqi and Syrian issues.
“There is a follow-up to the violations that are taking place, and here is our role in professionally documenting and communicating them,” he added.