Why is cc's python interpreter ignoring assert statement? any other alternative to purposely throw SIGABRT error for debugging purposes?

Hi, sorry for the very delayed reply. As you can see from Are any compiler flags set on the online judge? - #2 by admin, the OO flag is used on Codechef, and that ignores asserts, as explained here: optimization - What are the implications of running python with the optimize flag? - Stack Overflow