Since Ahmad al-Sharaa came to power in Syria, the Damascus government has been given carte blanche to use maximum force against any threat to its continued rule, writes VIJAY PRASHAD

PERHAPS one of South African Nobel peace prize-winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s most famous quotes is: “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”
With the appalling scenes on TV news this month of far-right thugs using firebombs and setting alight a police van outside a hotel on Merseyside, where refugees they were violently protesting against were cowering inside, never before did the great statesman’s wise words ring truer.
The black-led anti-racist campaign, The Liberation Movement (TLM), of which I’m co-founder, has joined 180 organisations that signed a Together With Refugees-initiated open letter to leaders of all parties in response to the appalling attack on the Suites Hotel in Knowsley, where asylum-seekers are housed.



