Sec. 2. Findings
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Congress finds the following: Over 14,000,000 Syrians have become refugees or internally displaced persons over the last 5 years. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has reported that since 2012, over 60,000 Syrians, including children, have died in Syrian prisons. In July 2014, the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the House of Representatives heard testimony from a former Syrian military photographer, alias Caesar , who fled Syria and smuggled out thousands of photos of tortured bodies.
In testimony, Caesar said, I have seen horrendous pictures of bodies of people who had tremendous amounts of torture, deep wounds and burns and strangulation. . In a June 16, 2015, hearing of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the House of Representatives, United States Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Samantha Power, testified that there are alarming and grave reports that the Assad regime has been turning chlorine into a chemical weapon, and on June 16, 2015, Secretary of State John Kerry stated that he was absolutely certain that the Assad regime has used chlorine against his people.
The Assad regime has repeatedly blocked civilian access to or diverted humanitarian assistance, including medical supplies, to besieged and hard-to-reach areas, in violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions. The course of the Syrian transition and its future leadership may depend on what the United States and its partners do now to save Syrian lives, alleviate suffering, and help Syrians determine their own future.