Thread by @OzKaterji

RT correspondent, a fully grown man paid to deny the Assad regime's war crimes for the Russian government, is accusing me of writing a statement on behalf of a displaced Syrian teenager because I translated his Arabic op ed for the i Paper 6 months ago

https://twitter.com/dancohen3000/status/1039278045595688960

How much did @dancohen3000 agree to sell his soul for? How much does the Russian government pay you to mock, denigrate, dehumanise and deny agency to children facing indiscriminate bombardment from Russian jets? How do you sleep at night?

Read Muhammad's words. He emailed me them in Arabic & I translated them into English. The Kremlin is paying Dan to attack & silence this child. They want to deny him the agency to protest the Russian jets that bombed him out of his home & killed his family
inews.co.uk/news/world/sur…

Muhammad's English isn't perfect, but he hasn't been to a proper school in years, he lived under the longest military siege in modern history and then was displaced to Idlib alongside 3 million other IDPs. He is a fearless and resolute young man that has taught himself.

In a war zone, after losing everything, he has taught himself broken English & is filming & documenting daily life in Syria in the same way activists twice his age get killed for on a daily basis. The Kremlin, through their paid media thugs like Dan, want Muhammad to disappear.

Muhammad is 16 years old. His dream is to be a journalist. He is an internally displaced Syrian child with little prospects of a brighter future and an incoming military assault that could kill and displace millions. Dan is being paid to bully him by the Russian government.

Is this making sense to people yet? Are you seeing how this works? Because frankly this stuff is happening every day and I only see the same old people fighting against it. It's 2018 and quite literally nothing separates us morally from the Weimar Republic anymore. We're there.

And, for full transparency, I was not paid to write this article for the i, i translated and edited it pro-bono, and I did not send any money to Muhammad for it. The editors weren't particularly interested in running the op ed either, I pitched it repeatedly for a week.

This isn't some grand conspiracy, I saw a Syrian teenage activist online tweeting out videos and photos of his life in Eastern Ghouta and thought that instead of running the same old bullshit, the newspaper should publish the words of an actual Syrian living in Ghouta.

I had the audacity to give Muhammad Najem a platform, and for that, the Kremlin saw fit to broadcast a hit piece on their state propaganda channel targeting me.

I'm not sure what Dan thinks he is doing by bringing attention to this. I fought to get the voice of a 15 year old living under military siege a platform shortly before he was forcibly displaced from his childhood home by the Assad regime.

I couldn't do anything to stop the atrocities that Muhammad survived, but I promised him that I would help him tell his story, in his own words, to the world. I'm proud of him, and I'm worried sick about what will happen to him in Idlib. I can't believe this is happening frankly.

But I can promise you this, I will not shy away from defending that brave young man and I will not cower in the face of those trying to rob him of his voice and his dignity.