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SBS to screen interview with Syrian President

SBS reporter secures a rare interview with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who accuses western nations, including Australia, of double standards.

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Tonight SBS will screen SBS Special: The Assad Interview, an exclusive interview with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus.

It has taken SBS World News reporter Luke Waters two years to secure the interview, in which President Assad accuses western nations, including Australia, of double standards.

He says the west criticises his government in public but then has dealings with it in private.

“Actually this is the double standard of the west in general,” President Assad tells Waters. “They attack us politically and then they send officials to deal with us under the table, especially the security, including your [the Australian] government …

“They don’t want to upset the United States. Actually most of the western officials they only repeat what the United States want them to say. This is the reality.”

Also on Friday evening’s special program the former Australian Ambassador to Syria, Bob Bowker, casts doubt on these claims:

“The reality is that Assad is seen in the west as an unfit leader to be dealt with”, Bowker tells SBS. “… in the rest of the Arab world as well, he has lost the credibility that he enjoyed early in his period as President, through a series of miscalculations on his part, rather than through the behaviour of those other Gulf states to which he was constantly referring in that interview.”

President Assad has been heavily condemned by global leaders for his tactics against insurgents, including Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull who has called him a murderous tyrant, and Opposition Leader Bill Shorten who says he is a butcher.

In the interview the Syrian President responds to this condemnation:

“These statements, I just can say they are disconnected from our reality, because I’m fighting terrorists, our army is fighting terrorists, our government is against terrorists, the whole institutions are against terrorists. If you call fighting terrorism butchery, that’s another issue.”

President Assad also has a message for Australians thinking about coming to Syria to fight.

“If there are foreigners coming without the permission of the government they are illegal, whether they want to fight terrorists or want to fight any other one. It’s the same. It’s illegal, we can call it.”

In the wide-ranging interview, President Assad says he has no preference for who wins the US election but he did weigh in on Brexit, describing the vote as a revolt of the people against “second tier politicians”.

7.30pm Friday 1 July on SBS.The full interview will be available at SBS On Demand directly after broadcast.

One Response

  1. This is a massive coup for Waters and SBS but sadly the majority of people won’t even know that it is on on, let alone be interested in watching it. The Tower of Power or The Crusher is how they prefer to consume their politics.

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