For every dead, two goats: Assad's reward

Syrian regime has started in Suweida province, south Syria, to distribute compensations for its victims' families. Assad's gift was no more than two goats for each family, State-run media said.

The "generous" compensation would cover 60 rural families so far.

Ahmed al-Qadiri, the Minister of Agriculture in the regime’s government pointed out to that project as a gratitude from the government for parents of the killed, abducted and injured. He detailed that the gift consists of 2 heads of the mountain goat to each family, which would cover 60 families.

People in As-Suwayda, have strongly condemned the project and decision, and considered it humiliating for them. They found nothing to do more than creating jokes and sarcastic talks about it, because they could not see it more than replacing every human being with two heads of goats.

Activist have ridiculed from the way the regime has dealt with As-Suwayda, the poor province, for decades. An activist who talk on condition of anonymity said: “the regime is trying to get closer to people in As-Suwayda by compensating them for the death of their sons, an average of 5 people of the province get killed daily, either as soldiers in the Syrian Army, where they are sent to hot areas, or as pro-regime militia ‘Shabiha”.

“Economically, the province had been poor, where families suffered from poverty before the Syrian revolution, and now the situation has got worse after losing supports in some of them. If we calculate the expenses of that humiliating compensation, it would reach to no more that S.P 12 million, provided the head’s price is S.P 100 thousands and the project would cover 60 families with 2 heads of goat each”, added.

Activists pointed out that compensation is considered a message from the regime to its supporters to tell them that their lives do not worth more than few millions of Syrian pound.

This post first appeared at EQTSAD; Translation by Yusra Ahmed