Beating cancer is something to be celebrated and used as an example for others in a similar situation to aspire to. But what if the cancer survivor held up as a shining light happens to be Asma Assad, the wife of a vicious dictator responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in a brutal civil war?
So it is with Syrian President Bashar Assad’s wife, the subject of a fawning article in the Daily Mail.
Syrian President Assad's wife Asma, 43, confirms she has 'totally conquered cancer' https://t.co/XZGhj0Udbc
— Daily Mail Femail (@Femail) August 4, 2019
We don’t begrudge Asma Assad’s personal victory over her illness or her encouragement of women to get regular health checkups. That the general health of Syria’s population and her husband’s responsibility for the brutality inflicted on Syria’s citizens over the past few years is barely touched upon is hard to fathom.
The wife of Assad has been widely praised for her outspokenness on cancer and her candid approach to her own illness, but has faced heavy criticism for failing to speak out against, or stop, her husband’s violent regime.
Her 53-year-old husband has been President of Syria since 17 July 2000. He is regional Secretary of the Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party’s branch in Syria.
The party is closely linked with the Islamist political party and militant group Hezbollah.
Asma’s progressive public image has taken a hit since the Syrian Civil War intensified in early 2012, as the First Lady was criticised for remaining silent throughout the beginning of the Syrian uprising.
This is where reality ends. Instead, Daily Mail readers are treated to a variety of fluffy photos of Asma as well as Bashar and a short interview clip from Syrian state television. Another video taken directly from the official social media of the Syrian presidency shows Asma as the humanitarian visiting wounded Syrian soldiers while a third video, devoid of context, allows Asma to criticize the Western media’s coverage of the Syrian Civil War.
The Syrian state propaganda machine couldn’t have asked for a more pliant platform than the Daily Mail, one of the most widely read news sites in the world.
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Where’s the outrage?
While Asma Assad is portrayed as a humanitarian and a brave cancer survivor, what about the rest of her fellow citizens?
What about the use of chemical weapons on civilians by her husband’s regime?
What about the indiscriminate air strikes and barrel bombs on Syrian villages?
And what about the Syrian healthcare system destroyed by Assad’s forces while Asma received her cancer treatment?
Only in the past few months, prominent doctors and Nobel laureates issued a plea for an end to a bombing campaign that had targeted some 20 hospitals in Syria’s north-west.
One paediatrician, Abdulkader Razouk, described to the Observer how he and his colleagues evacuated an entire hospital including dialysis patients, mothers in labour and premature babies in incubators, as airstrikes began in their town, at least 12 miles from the frontline. “After the airstrikes, but before the direct attack, we knew the hospital would be targeted,” he said in a phone interview about the Tarmala hospital, which was eventually hit on 10 May. “Only a few medical staff stayed to provide emergency response.”
The airstrike destroyed more than half the hospital and much of its equipment from beds and generators to the operating theatres, emergency services and pharmacy. Staff went back briefly to hunt through the rubble for any supplies that survived the onslaught but the building is now abandoned. “It would be impossible to rebuild and reopen now,” Razouk said. “The airstrikes are continuing and still targeting the hospital until this moment, even though it’s empty.”
Treated in a military hospital
Meanwhile, in one interview mentioned by the Daily Mail:
She [Asma Assad] was also asked why she chose to be treated in Syria and in particular – a military hospital.
‘Lisa, after nine years of war, you ask me why in the military hospital?!’ she replied with a laugh.
The interviewer explained that ‘the question is being asked’ and Asma added: ‘I am proud that I was treated in a military hospital.
‘I am honoured that those who were treated with me were, a few hours or days earlier, on the front lines defending our country.’
The stench of hypocrisy is overwhelming. The Daily Mail doesn’t consider the state of Syria’s civilian hospitals, so many of which have been deliberately bombed by Assad’s military and its allies. While Asma Assad is treated in a military hospital, her fellow citizens have been deprived of medical care, including cancer treatment, by her own husband’s brutality.
While other media outlets such as Reuters and the Associated Press saw fit to address Asma Assad’s position in Bashar’s vicious regime, it’s only the final paragraph of the Daily Mail’s article that we learn the human cost of the civil war:
Since Syria’s civil war broke out in 2011, Mrs Assad has mostly been seen in public receiving families of fallen soldiers, or hosting people wounded in the conflict, now in its eighth year, which has killed more than 400,000 people.
For the Daily Mail, it is the conflict that has killed more than 400,000 people with barely a thought as to who is responsible for the killing. But why ruin such a positive narrative with information that could tarnish Asma Assad’s image?
This isn’t the first time that a puff piece on Asma Assad has appeared in the western media. Vogue magazine was pilloried back in 2011. It appears that the lessons from that embarrassment to journalism have not been learned.
Shame on the Daily Mail for publishing this.
