(Zaman Al Wasl)- Malmö Arab Film Festival in Sweden has not responded to the demand of the Syrians Forward organisation in Malmö to ban a Syrian film polishing Bashar al-Assad.
Syrians Forward group said ‘The Cord’, which had been filmed on the ruins of Zabadani town, northwest of Damascus, is a continuation of the state terrorism, calling on the festival management to withdraw it from its program, to avoid making the festival a "platform for Assad’s propaganda".
The group considered that the screening of Allaith Hajjo’s film, pro-Assad director, in Sweden is an attempt to terrorize Syrian refugees and survivors with slogans through which Assad seeks to be re-accepted in the international arena. It is an “insult to those resting in the city cemeteries, waiting for justice to calm their soul and the souls of their loved ones.”
The film tells the story of a woman who enters into an early labor and due to the siege imposed on their neighborhood with the midwife unable to reach her, is helped by her husband to give birth amidst the threat of sniper and death. The film was screened at the Egyptian El Gouna festival and was awarded a prize at a French festival before being shown at the Malmö festival.
Zabadani and its villages and towns such as Madaya and Wadi Barada have faced since 2011 to the most heinous types of state and cross-border terrorism. Like other cities in Syria, it was the scene of crimes committed by the Assad army against its local population with the support of sectarian terrorist militias like the Lebanese Hezbollah militia, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and the Russian army. The inhabitants of the city have found themselves displaced since 2015.
The population of Zabadani does not exceed 7,000 people today (previously exceeding 120,000 until 2011), living in harsh conditions with the lack of basic services like water, electricity, education and others.
Today, tens of thousands of Zabadani residents are living in exile and Assad's detention camps after thousands have been killed. The famous Zabadani plain has turned into a desert after losing more than half a million fruit trees cut by Assad's army and Hezbollah fighters and sold in Syria and Lebanon.
Eight years of war in Syria have killed 560,000 people and driven half the pre-war population of 22 million from their homes, including more than 6 million as refugees to neighbouring countries.
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