Kofi Annan should push Syria’s government to allow the UN-appointed Commission of Inquiry access into the country to investigate the May 25, 2012, killing of at least 108 Houla residents, Human Rights Watch said today ahead of an impending visit by the UN envoy to Damascus. The Syrian government has so far refused entry to the UN-mandated commission. Human Rights Watch also reiterated its call to the UN Security Council to refer the situation in Syria to the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Following a May 26 visit to Houla, a region made up of several villages about 20 kilometers northwest of the restive city of Homs, UN monitors confirmed the killings and condemned the “brutal tragedy.” The head of the UN monitoring mission in Syria, Maj Gen Robert Mood, told the media that some of the dead had been killed by shelling and others shot at close range, but did not attribute responsibility for the close-range killing. According to survivors that Human Rights Watch interviewed and local activists, the Syrian army shelled the area on May 25, and armed men, dressed in military clothes, attacked homes on the outskirts of town and executed entire families.
All of the witnesses stated the armed men were pro-government, but they did not know whether they were members of the Syrian army or a pro-government militia, locally referred to as shabeeha. Houla’s towns, overwhelmingly Sunni, are surrounded by Alawite and Shia villages, and sectarian tensions have been high since last year. At a press conference on May 27, a spokesman for the Syrian Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Ministry categorically denied the army’s responsibility for the killings and announced that the government had formed a military judicial committee to conduct an investigation.
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HOULA (SYRIA) MASSACRE : United Nations observers on the ground have confirmed that at least 108 people were killed, including 49 children and 34 women. Some were killed by shell fire, others appear to have been shot or stabbed at close range.
AL JAZEERA ENGLISH NEWS REPORT: HOULA MASSACRE - Scores have been killed in an attack by Syrian government forces and loyalists on Houla, a town in Homs province, according to activists.
The Syrian National council has asked the United Nations to take immediate action after what it called a “massacre”.
ABU DHABI // The international community vowed yesterday to revive the Syrian economy when President Bashar Al Assad’s regime is toppled.
At a meeting held at the capital’s Emirates Palace hotel, representatives from more than 60 countries presented economic development plans and reforms, which they hoped would give Syrians an “optimistic look to their future”.
In what was described as a “clear message to the Syrian people”, the UAE and Germany, who co-chaired the meeting, announced they would fund the establishment of a general secretariat to co-ordinate global efforts.
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***MUST WATCH*** BBC’S LYCE DOUCET TRAVELS TO HOMS WITH UNITED NATIONS MONITORS. Please watch and share. Witness a fraction of the utter destruction and devastation that Assad’s army has brought upon the Capital of the Syrian Revolution.
Mohammed Rahman Sohail says he witnessed Assad regime forces corner men before 83 of them were gunned down.
Crouching in a gap between two grey boulders, Mohammed Rahman Sohail first heard the screams of defiance, then the machine guns opening up.
Down the valley, around 300 metres away, he could make out about 100 men like him hiding behind jagged rocks, desperately trying to outmanoeuvre the turrets pointing their way.
The tanks and men with machine guns had moved out from nearby villages and readied themselves on the high ground, herding their captives like dogs corralling stock to this small forsaken valley on a mountain plateau in northern Syria.
With the men trapped below, gunmen loyal to the regime of President Bashar al-Assad walked steadily around the ridge until every man beneath them had no chance of escape.
Reporters Without Borders is shocked to learn of the death sentence passed today on the citizen journalist Mohammed Abdelmawla al-Hariri for “high treason and contacts with foreign parties”. He was arrested on 16 April just after giving an interview to the television station Al-Jazeera about the situation in his hometown of Deraa.
“Such a verdict is unacceptable and out of all proportion to Mohamed al-Hariri’s so-called crime of giving an interview to Al-Jazeera,” the press freedom organization said.
“The government of Bashar al-Assad has thus shown the extent of its brutality and cruelty. Reporters Without Borders calls for this contemptible verdict to be overturned and for this citizen journalist to be released immediately.”
According to the SKeyes Center for Media and Cultural Freedom, Hariri was subjected to horrific torture after his arrest, to the point of being partially paralysed. After the verdict was pronounced, he was transferred to Saidnaya military prison north of Damascus.
Hariri gave regular interviews to Al-Jazeera about the situation on the ground in Deraa in southern Syria, such as this one on 15 April. The Syrian government has accused the Qatari-based station and other foreign media outlets of being part of a global plot to cause chaos in Syria.
Reporters Without Borders lists Assad among 41 predators of freedom of information. Several media workers, citizen journalists and cyber-activists have been killed by the government since the start of the year and dozens more are currently languishing in Syria’s prisons.
The above photo, originally published by AFP, depicting a man wearing an al-Qaeda themed armband accompanying UNSMIS personnel is one of the recent examples of the Syrian regime’s ongoing media campaign aiming to frame the now year-old uprising challenging its rule as an al-Qaeda-sympathetic Islamist insurgency.
Of course, the above photo made the rounds on the usual regime-owned & regime-sympathetic outlets – initially featured on the state-owned daily al-Watan, where it was depicted as “proof” for the regime’s claims about “Salafi terrorist gangs” and even as a basis for accusing UNSMIS observers of “collaboration” with them. The photo also made an appearance in an article by Sharmine Nawrani on al-Akhbar claiming “a growing Jihadi presence in Syria”.
The only, and perhaps most damning, caveat in these claims is that the man in the above photo is in fact the exact opposite of what he claims. In a recorded video statement earlier today, the man identifies himself as “Ahmad al-Mustafa”, a soldier in the Syrian Army’s fourth division, and announced his defection shortly thereafter, revealing that he, along with others, were instructed by superiors to “grow beards” and wear the outfit seen in the video in order to “help confirm the regime’s story”.
Fighting in parts of Syria has morphed into local guerrilla wars, the Red Cross said Tuesday, where the number of prisoners remains unknown and 1.5 million people need help getting food, water, shelter, power and sanitation.
Fighting in the central city of Homs, where U.N. observers helped halt weeks of artillery attacks, and in the northern Syrian town of Idlib are now non-international armed conflicts, said Jakob Kellenberger, president of International Committee of the Red Cross.
“The type of the violence has changed a little bit,” Kellenberger told a news conference at ICRC headquarters in Geneva.
More than a month after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton promised to provide non-lethal aid to the Syrian opposition movement, leaders battling a brutal government crackdown say almost none of that aid has arrived.
Clinton announced April 1 the USA would provide medical and communications equipment and supplies, with the State Department pledging $33 million in non-lethal aid by the end of the month. Saleh Al-Hamwi, a leader of the Syrian Revolution General Commission, said Friday from Hama, Syria, he knows of only five satellite phones provided by the U.S. government.
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Thanks @usgrant63
HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH - SYRIA: WAR CRIMES IN IDLEB DURING PEACE NEGOTIATIONS - EXECUTIONS, DESTRUCTION OF PROPERTY AND ARBITRARY DETENTIONS.
While diplomats argued over details of Annan’s peace plan, Syrian tanks and helicopters attacked one town in Idlib after another. Everywhere we went, we saw burnt and destroyed houses, shops, and cars, and heard from people whose relatives were killed. It was as if the Syrian government forces used every minute before the ceasefire to cause harm.
‘FREEDOM’S EYE’S’ (عيون الحرية) - Incredible compilation of video’s shot by the brave citizen journalists of Syria. Many have died and many more have been injured trying to show the world the horrific crimes that Assad’s forces have and are committing.
Thanks @Homsae
Al ARABIYA REPORT ON 65 MEMBERS OF THE GHAZAL FAMIL - ALL MURDERED IN EARLY APRIL OF THIS YEAR IN IDLEB. (ENGLISH SUBTITLES). Idleb (Taftenaz) - One of the surviving members of the family speaks to reporters from Al Arabiya about the massacre of her family.
Syrian security forces summarily executed over 100 – and possibly many more – civilians and wounded or captured opposition fighters during recent attacks on cities and towns, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.
The 25-page report, “In Cold Blood: Summary Executions by Syrian Security Forces and Pro-Government Militias,” documents more than a dozen incidents involving at least 101 victims since late 2011, many of them in March 2012. Human Rights Watch documented the involvement of Syrian forces and pro-government shabeeha militias in summary and extrajudicial executions in the governorates of Idlib and Homs. Government and pro-government forces not only executed opposition fighters they had captured, or who had otherwise stopped fighting and posed no threat, but also civilians who likewise posed no threat to the security forces.
Former Syrian soldiers who’ve escaped to northern Iraq are telling grisly stories of how their units executed unarmed civilians for demonstrating against the Assad regime and staged mass reprisals when residents shot back, on one occasion lining up and shooting 30 defenseless civilians.
The former soldiers — Syrian Kurds who’ve crossed the mountainous border into Iraq’s Kurdistan region in small groups over the past three months, a group that now totals well more than 400 — also brought tales of colleagues being shot for not firing on civilians. One former special-forces noncommissioned officer even said he suspected that other government troops had orchestrated an ambush his unit endured, in an effort to motivate the unit to kill civilians.
Members of a special United Nations commission of inquiry said they’d heard many reports of soldiers being shot for not shooting civilians but that they hadn’t been able to confirm them. The U.N. investigators said they hadn’t heard reports of government-staged ambushes against its own forces.
Reports of brutality against Syrian civilians in the year since the government of President Bashar Assad has moved aggressively against demonstrators demanding Assad’s removal are nothing new. But those accounts have come largely from members of the opposition or refugees, who’ve told investigators of them.
The testimonies of the former soldiers, however, are the first accounts from individuals who were serving in military units that allegedly carried out the atrocities. They provide new substance to the U.N.’s accusations that the Syrian government may be guilty of “crimes against humanity” for its brutal suppression of the anti-Assad uprising.
Revolting: present participle of re·volt (Verb): To rise in rebellion.
The Revolting Syrian aims to provide the world with daily updates on the brutal and shocking response Bashar Al Assad and his forces are using against the peaceful and freedom loving people in Syria as they fight for their freedom and dignity.
