4
GUYANA CHRONICLE Tuesday December 3, 2013
UN implicates Bashar al-Assad in Syria war crimes (BBC News) THE UN’s human rights chief has said an inquiry has produced evidence that war crimes were authorised in Syria at the “highest level”, including by President Bashar al-Assad. It is the first time the UN’s human rights office has so directly implicated Mr Assad. Commissioner Navi Pillay said her office held a list of others implicated by the inquiry. The UN estimates more than 100,000 people have died in the conflict. The UN’s commission of inquiry into Syria has produced “massive evidence... [of] very serious crimes, war crimes, crimes against humanity,” Ms Pillay said. “The scale of viciousness of the abuses being perpetrated by elements on both sides almost defies belief,” she said. The evidence indicated responsibility “at the highest level of government, including the head of state”, she added. The inquiry has also previously reported it has evidence that rebel forces in Syria have been guilty of human rights abuses. However, the investigators have always said the Syrian government appears to be responsible for the majority, and that the systematic nature of the abuse points to government policy. Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad was dismissive of Ms Pillay’s remarks. “She has been talking non-
sense for a long time and we don’t listen to her,” he told AP. Mr Mekdad was in The Hague at a meeting of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) to discuss the effort to destroy Syria’s chemical weapons. He told the BBC that Syria needed more money and equipment from the international community. He said Syria needed lorries and armoured vehicles to transport chemicals to prevent “terrorists” attacking the vehicles. DEATH TOLL ‘OVER 125,000’ Ms Pillay said the UN commission of inquiry had compiled a list of those believed to be directly responsible for serious human rights violations.
It is assumed that senior figures in the Syrian military and government are on that list, the BBC’s Imogen Foulkes reports from Geneva. However, the names and specific evidence relating to them remain confidential pending a possible prosecution for war crimes and crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court (ICC). She has previously called on the UN Security Council to refer Syria to the ICC. Syria is not a state party to the ICC and therefore any investigation into the conflict would need to be mandated by the Security Council. However, Russia and China have a veto on the council and would be highly unlikely to let such a move pass.
Navi Pillay is the first UN figure to directly implicate Mr Assad in alleged war crimes
Syria death toll hits nearly 126,000: monitoring group (Reuters) - THE death toll in Syria’s civil war has risen to at least 125,835, more than a third of them civilians, but the real figure is probably much higher, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Monday. The pro-opposition monitoring group also appealed to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and “all people in the international community who have a conscience” to increase their efforts to end the 2-1/2 year war. The conflict began as peaceful protests against four
decades of rule by President Bashar al-Assad’s family, but under a fierce security force crackdown, turned into an armed insurgency whose sectarian dimensions have echoed across the Middle East. The Observatory, based in Britain but with a network of activists across Syria, put the number of children killed in the conflict so far at 6,627. It put the death toll among rebels fighting the Assad government at least 27,746 rebels, including more than 6,000 categorized as foreign fighters or unknown combatants.
DATE: 30/11/2013 M 02 08 09 17 22 28 18
“The number is likely much higher but in many battles, the number of rebels killed is hidden, especially by the (al Qaeda-linked) Nusra Front and Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant,” Rami Abdelrahman, head of the Observatory, told Reuters. He said the observatory had documented 50,430 deaths among the Syrian armed forces and local militias supporting Assad, but said that number too was probably higher. SECTARIAN CONFLICT “There are at least 40,000 more dead combatants but they
2013/11/30
03
07
09
14
25
2013/12/02
12
08
02
10
25
were not included in the toll because the cases were not documented well enough,” Abdelrahman said. Both Sunni and Shi’ite militants from around the region have joined the fight on opposite sides. Many Sunni Muslim countries support the rebels, who are led by Syria’s Sunni majority. Shi’ite Muslim states back Assad, who is from the minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam. As well as Syrians, nearly 500 Shi’ite foreign militants have died fighting with Assad’s army, the Observatory said. Around half of those were from the powerful Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah, whose military support for Assad has helped his forces make strategic territorial advances in central Syria.
“The Observatory calls for ... serious efforts (by the international community) to stop the killing in Syria and help its people transition to a democratic state with freedom, justice and equality,” it said in a statement. The United Nations does not give regular casualty counts for Syria. It has said for months that more than 100,000 have died. International efforts have largely concentrated on a planned peace conference in Geneva next month and on the destruction of Syria’s stockpile of chemical weapons. The West blames Assad for a poison gas attack near Damascus on August 21 that killed hundreds of people, but are now working with his forces to remove and destroy such weapons from Syria.
2013/11/30
6
6
0
2013/11/30
09 10 11 15 18 14 21
2013/12/02
0
5
0
2013/12/02
06 02 17 11 13 16 12