UNITED NATIONS Rights Head Warns Of 'Civil War' In Syria – Al-Jazeera Intl News

International community urged to take immediate action as UN's estimated death toll since protests began exceeds 3,000.

The number of people killed in Syria in violence related to protests against President Bashar al-Assad's government has now reached more than 3,000, the United Nations human rights chief has said, as she has called for "the international community to take immediate measures to protect the Syrian people".

Navi Pillay, the UN's high commissioner for human rights, expressed her deep dismay at the "remorseless toll of human lives", according to a statement released from the body's head office in Geneva on Friday.

"The number of people killed since the violence started in March has now exceeded 3,000, including at least 187 children. More than 100 people have been reported killed in the last 10 days alone," she said.

"In addition, thousands have been arrested, detained, forcibly disappeared and tortured. Family members inside and outside the country have been targeted for harassment, intimidation, threats and beatings.

"As more members of the military refuse to attack civilians and change sides, the crisis is already showing worrying signs of descending into an armed struggle."

"The Government of Syria has manifestly failed to protect its population. Furthermore, it has ignored the international community's calls to co-operate with international investigations," the UN human rights chief said.

Meanwhile, activists said at least 9 people were killed in demonstrations across the country on Friday and that the number was expected to rise, Al Jazeera's Rula Amin reported from Beirut in neighbouring Lebanon.

   "The demonstrations spread from Dera'a in the south to the central part of the country in Homs, in Idlib, and to the eastern part in Deir Azzour," Amin said.

"The slogans today were of course, the toppling of the regime, a call on Syrian officers and soldiers to refuse orders to shoot and a call on international community to provide help and to provide protection for civilians."

International action

Pillay said that the international community must take "protective action in a collective and decisive manner", before the violence drives Syria into "a full-blown civil war".

"Sniping from rooftops, and indiscriminate use of force against peaceful protesters - including the use of live
ammunition and the shelling of residential neighbourhoods - have become routine occurrences in many Syrian cities," Pillay said.

Such call by the UN human rights commissioner "will mean very good news for the [Syrian] people, because it will add pressure on the international community to do something," but it is unclear what exactly they expect the world to do, our correspondent Rula Amin said.

Some say they do want military intervention and even welcome it because of the intensity to which Assad has cracked down on the population with violence, Amin said.

"They're talking about no fly zones, to stop the Syrian military and the government from using planes and tanks."

However, one member of the coalition of opposition groups, said the struggle against the Assad regime must remain peaceful.

"There is a pull by some people to take the country towards armed resistance, [but] most people disagree," said Louay Safi, the chair of the political office of the Syrian National Council (SNC).

"The council itself believe the best option it to have unarmed resistance - a peaceful resistance."

"We should avoid civil war at all costs and we believe the regime will fall if the people continue opposing it and the world stops giving support [to the government] from the outside," Safi added.

Arab League

Arab League foreign ministers will hold an emergency meeting on Sunday to discuss the ongoing unrest in protest-hit Syria, Al Jazeera's Rawya Rageh said.

The meeting will "apparently look into what measures they can take against the Syrian regime, after it has refused all recommendations put forward by the League in their last meeting on Syria" ... including a list of political reforms and dispatching a fact-finding mission from the League, an Arab League source said, according to Rageh.

The 22-member Arab League has not yet approved the request but such meetings need only the approval of two members to take place.

Six member states of the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) called for such a  meeting on Thursday, demanding on the need address "the situation in Syria, which has deteriorated sharply, particularly in its humanitarian dimensions, and steps that could help end the bloodshed and halt the machine of violence".

In a meeting on September 13, Arab foreign ministers met in Cairo and called on the Syrian authorities to "immediately stop the bloodshed," drawing a testy response from Damascus.

Nabil al-Arabi, the Arab League chief, had met Assad three days earlier and presented him with a 13-point document outlining Arab proposals for reform.

Source:http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/10/2011101492410996889.html

More Syria deaths as dissidents urge Assad isolation

DAMASCUS: Thirty-eight people were killed in clashes in two days in northwest Syria, a rights activist said on Sunday, as dissidents meeting in Brussels called for the isolation of President Bashar al-Assad.

“Thirty-eight people were killed in shootings in the region of Jisrash Shughur, 10 yesterday and 28 today,” Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, told AFP.

The updated toll includes six members of the Syrian security forces.

Rahman earlier gave a toll of 25 – 19 civilians and six security agents – but warned that number could rise as military and security forces continued operations in the northwest Idlib province.

Residents of the central city of Hama, where at least 53 people were reported killed during anti-regime protests on Friday, said nearly 100,000 people were staging a protest during a three-day strike that began on Saturday.

On Saturday, an activist in Jisrash Shughur said “security forces opened fire to scatter more than 1,000 demonstrators protesting after the funeral of a civilian killed on Friday” in protests at the nearby village of Has.

Syria’s official SANA news agency reported at the time that “a member of the army was killed and a policeman injured in clashes” in Jisrash Shughur.

“Armed groups attacked a police station and military barracks in the area” and one assailant was killed, SANA said.

Rights groups say more than 1,100 civilians have been killed and at least 10,000 arrested in Syria since protests erupted in mid-March.

Damascus insists that the unrest is the work of “armed terrorist gangs”backed by Islamists and foreign agitators.

Syria has freed more than 450 political prisoners and prisoners of conscience since Tuesday as part of a general amnesty announced by Assad, Rahman told AFP on Sunday.
Most of the released are Islamists or Kurds, he added.

Syrian Prime Minister Adel Safar, meanwhile, ordered the creation of a committee tasked with drafting a law on political parties, SANA reported.

The current constitution stipulates that the ruling Baath party is “the leader of state and society” and political pluralism has been at the forefront of demands by pro-reform dissidents.

In Europe, Syrian opposition activists urged the international community to increase pressure on Assad and called for an independent investigation into his regime’s deadly crackdown.

The roughly 200 activists gathered in Brussels also said charges should be laid against those responsible for violations of human rights in the repression, and cases brought before the International Criminal Court.

“There needs to be more pressure on the regime,” organisers of the Brussels meeting said in a statement.

“It is very important to impose diplomatic isolation on the Syrian regime, and to not allow it to be represented in international bodies,” added the grouping, called the National Coalition of Support for the Syrian Revolution.

The European Union and the United States have already imposed sanctions on Assad and his inner circle.

The coalition dismissed as a “farce” Assad’s creation of a body tasked with creating a national dialogue.

A final resolution from the Brussels meeting announced the creation of a commission to evaluate human rights violations by the regime with the purpose of laying charges and sending cases to the International Criminal Court.

It said the coalition also wanted to “communicate with international organisations with the aim of coming up with a resolution condemning the violence by the Syrian regime.”

At a similar meeting in the Mediterranean resort of Antalya in Turkey on Wednesday and Thursday, opposition groups urged Assad’s immediate resignation and the holding of parliamentary and presidential elections within a year.

Syria’s Foreign Minister Walid Muallem, meanwhile, made a brief visit to the United Arab Emirates where he met Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammad bin Zayed al-Nahayan.

“The demands of reform and the need for stability can go hand in hand as they can be reconciled,” the official WAM news agency reported Sheikh Mohammad as saying.

Source: http://www.dawn.com/2011/06/06/more-syria-deaths-as-dissidents-urge-assad-isolation.html