Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Wednesday attended a ceremony organized by the Martyrsâ Sons and Daughters Schools Establishment to honor the children of martyrs who followed in their fathersâ footsteps and joined military academies, SANA agency reports.
President al-Assad addressed the children of martyrs and the schoolsâ staff members, saying that he feels great joy when he meets the sons and daughters of martyrs, and that he wanted to join them on this occasion, which takes place on Martyrs Day.
President al-Assad stressed that Martyrs Day has many values associated with it, some of them symbolic, and some very tangible linked to the history of Syria, as around 100 years ago, the Ottomans carried out a campaign of arrests and executions of Syrian patriots and nationalists which culminated in 1916 when a large group of nationalists were executed by the Ottomans for defending the Syrian people from oppression.
The President noted that the Ottomansâ crimes at that time werenât restricted to nationalists; they also committed heinous crimes against millions of Armenians, Syriacs, and other groups under their rule at a time, and now these same massacres are being repeated in the same way but with different tools and names, as back then it was the Othman Jammal Basha âthe Butcherâ who had ordered the executions, and today history repeats itself as his ancestor Erdogan âthe Butcherâ is the one committing these crimes.
President al-Assad said that martyrdom is the most noble value to be championed by human beings anywhere in the world when they are defending their homeland, and the nobility of martyrdom isnât restricted to the martyrs themselves; rather it extends to all those who continue to champion this value, and none can champion it better than the families of the martyrs.