Comment on report of the independent international commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic

The Syrian Human Rights Organization (Swasiah)

The Security Council shall determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression and shall make recommendations, or decide what measures shall be taken in accordance with Articles 41 and 42, to maintain or restore international peace and security.

Article 39 of the Charter of the United Nations

Should the Security Council consider that measures provided for in Article 41 would be inadequate or have proved to be inadequate, it may take such action by air, sea, or land forces as may be necessary to maintain or restore international peace and security. Such action may include demonstrations, blockade, and other operations by air, sea, or land forces of Members of the United Nations.

Article 42 of the Charter of the United Nations

Statement

The UN investigation committee for Syria issued last week its report describing the deepening of the Syrian tragedy due to the war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated by the forces of the regime, and its impacts on civilians during the period starting July 15^th, 2012, up to the present time. This issued report was supported by 445 interviews with victims of the massacres committed by the Syrian regime.

The report has highlighted the following issues:

The forces of the Syrian regime and the militias affiliated with it have committed many crimes, such as killing, torture, rape, kidnapping innocent people, burning and destroying property, arresting young people, and committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, such as multiple massacres nationwide, and especially in the southern part of the city of Damascus, which is overwhelmingly crowded and inhabited by Sunni.  These acts are considered as great breaches and serious violations of international humanitarian law.  The armed opposition groups are also accused of committing war crimes, including murder and locating military targets within residential areas, but the violations of the armed opposition groups are considered less in terms of size and density, and in terms of gravity of the level of the crimes committed by the regime and its associated militias.

-The report accuses both the regime and the opposition of using children in their armed forces, and of thus violating the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child signed by the Syrian government.

-The UN committee considers that the solution lies in the final statement issued in Geneva by the working group for Syria on 06/30/2012, and to ensure the accountability of all parties for the committed crimes, taking into consideration the culture of impunity, and support the element of finding the facts, in order to find common ground for a comprehensive reconciliation.  At the end of the mandate, the Committee pledges to report a secret black list of the units and individuals, who have committed crimes against civilians as a prelude to pursue them legally in the future.

The content of the report
The report reviews the most recent stages of the Syrian crisis over the past six months, in which the conflict has become more bloody, and the efforts for a political settlement have come to a halt because of the divergent interests of international actors, ranging from the failure of a truce during the Eid al-Adha holiday; to the establishment of the National Alliance for the opposition forces, and the international recognition of it; to the entry of the Al-Nusra Front, a group associated with the armed opposition, into the list of terrorist organizations in accordance with the criteria and standards of the Americans; to the speech of Assad Jr. on January 6^th, 2013, which brought disappointments at the local, regional and international levels because Assad Jr.  insisted on hanging onto power at any cost, and his will to block any political settlement that might offer the Syrian people a way out of the ruin and destruction that has befallen them; to the final statement of the Geneva Conference on 6/30/2013, which we have already referred to; to the demand by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights of the United Nations to refer the Syrian file to the International Criminal Court; to the efforts of Lakhdar Brahimi who wanted to put an end to the violence in Syria and to engage the disputed parties in negotiations.

The reports points to:

–          The escalation of violence in Syria between the regime and opposition, although the violence of the two is not proportionate or equal, and to the intervention of the armed Kurdish militias to the front line, in the interest of the Syrian regime, alongside the militias of the popular committees or Shabiha, formed by the Syrian regime to participate in the military operations alongside the regime government forces.

–          The use of aerial bombardment and ground missile hitting targets in the  besieged cities, and the use of non-conventional ammunitions or “vacuum bombs” in the bombing of the Syrian cities.

–          Conversely the forces of the opposition to the Syrian regime continue to increase their capacity to challenge the imposition of government control and continue to seize strategic locations such as water sources, oil fields and airports, despite being not organized forces, and despite dispersion and not being fully effective under a unified command.

–          Also despite the increasing numbers of foreign fighters in its forces, but they are limited to small groups compared with the majority of the Syrian rebels numbers, just as their weapons are unequal to the weapons used by the regime troops. The rebels depend on smuggling their arms from abroad and what they can capture or loot from the government army.

–          Recently tensions have increased between the Syrian anti-government forces (the “revolutionaries”) and the armed Kurdish militias of the Syrian regime or  those Kurdish militias harmonious with the Syrian regime, especially the Kurdish Democratic Union, which clashed with armed opposition groups, considering them undesirable groups in areas that do not belong to them.

–          The report noted also what accompanied the conflict in Syria by way of systematic destruction and by the indiscriminate shelling of the basic infrastructure and public utilities, such as water, electricity, schools and hospitals, and other life facilities, threatening to result in a total collapse of the social and economic infrastructure of the country in light of the tragic situation of millions of  people who are displaced, the difficulty of providing relief in the form of medical, food or humanitarian support, the increased rates of disease, and the increase in dogmatic religious extremism.

The report then discusses the negative economic crisis and inflation, which exceeded 50%, and the rising bread prices due to a system of collective punishment targeting bakeries across the country with aerial bombardment, as well the aerial bombardment which targeted schools, institutions, hospitals, health centers and looting and destroying factories.

The regime forces also destroyed crops and grain warehouses. The report estimates the number of the Syrian refugees registered abroad at 671,262, while the estimated number of persons displaced inside Syria reached two million.

The report speaks of deteriorating conditions of Palestinian refugees in Syria.
And finally the report reviews the subject of the collective massacres in Syria, and defines it and lists it under the deliberate killing of civilians, who are not taking any direct part in hostilities or combatants who are hors de combat.
The report has hinted that the Syrian regime targeted southern parts of the city inhabited by a Sunni majority, and on 08/01/2012, 60 bodies were discovered of people and residents living in Artouz town, victims of summary execution who had been shot, most of whose hands were tied.  With respect to each of these massacres, the international investigation committee pointed fingers formally to the Syrian regime.

These included the massacre committed in Daraya, which was targeted by shelling and bombardment, between August 20 and 24, and then moved into by the Syrian regime forces along with Shabiha militias, resulting in a terrible catastrophe that killed more than 700 victims.  Then the Altrimssaha massacre …. And ElHarrak town in Daraa, which claimed the lives of more than 48 victims who were stabbed and their bodies then burned, most of them women and children, who are believed to have been buried  inside the military Brigade / 52 / of the regime’s army.

As well as the massacre of Deir Bealba in Homs and the massacre in the village of Mohassan in Deir al-Zour, and in Douma in the rural area of Damascus, where all those massacres were targeting unarmed civilians and persons hors de combat.

The government forces are considered responsible for all these crimes against humanity, where they did not exclude the elderly, women and children from the barbaric acts of genocide.

As for the forces of the armed opposition, the report notes a mass killing that took place on July 28 or 29, 2012, of five members of the Al Berri family in Aleppo after an unfair trial, which did not observe due process; likewise there are indications that a judicial body believed to be associated with the brigade called Al-Towheed carried out the death sentence without due process of law on five Alawaite fighters on the road to Al-Hifa in Latakia, in late July, after an unfair trial in violation of Article 3  of the Geneva Conventions, which prohibits the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without being pronounced by a court to ensure all the judicial guarantees, which are recognized and indispensable under international humanitarian law.

Our observations and remarks on this report:
With due respect and appreciation for the International Commission of investigation, and for the important role it has played, and by our confidence in the integrity and impartiality of its members’ professionalism, nonetheless the Syrian Organization for Human Rights has some reservations, of which the most important are:
First:  The Syrian Organization for Human Rights considers that the International Commission of Investigation is a technical criminal investigative body which aims to uncover the truth and pointing fingers directly to the offender and has nothing to do with setting out the horizon or perceptions of a political solution, by talking about the Geneva communiqué, which we in the Syrian Human Rights Organization refer to as the as “Lavrov communiqué”, because we exclude Geneva from such sins, as a city of peace.
The so-called Geneva communiqué was issued eight months ago, when the number of victims registered by the Syrian Organization for Human Rights stood at 18067, among them 1374 children and 1328 women only.
But now, after eight months of systematic killings, in complicity with the global intelligence community and with international decision-makers, those who had the right to force the decision of “veto” in the security council of the UN, this situation has led us to face a new reality.
The number of victims whose identity can be documented by name has now reached 69,537. Those numbers include: 4798 children, 3817 women, and more than 1500 victims dead under torture. So what are you telling us Mr. Lavrov.

Second: The report states that the regime and the opposition violated the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which was previously signed by the Syrian regime by deploying children in military operations.
But: Has the armed Syrian opposition signed the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and its Optional Protocol such that it should be accused of violating it?  And are 4798 children, whose right to life has been violated, to be considered victims of the armed opposition or victims of indiscriminate shelling by the regime?
While we in the Syrian Human Rights Organization emphasize that the use and recruitment of children into military action is a tantamount to a war crime, still the breach of the Convention on the Rights of the Child with its annexed Protocol is something else and different. This accusation falls directly on the shoulders of the Syrian regime, and not on the armed opposition, and according to international humanitarian law, international human rights law, or the principles of public international law, the Syrian state is responsible for protecting the fundamental rights of its citizens, and not the opposition, and this is what the Syrian government has failed to do. Not only that, the Syrian government has targeted the lives of its citizens collectively and systematically, committing war crimes, and using children in military operations, which led to the documentation of nearly seventy thousand victims killed so far, according to preliminary estimates.
Third:  Some of the criticism directed at the armed opposition groups involved their responsibility in locating military objectives within residential communities.
It is not a secret for the esteemed committee of investigation, that this situation had been created by this reality, and proved itself by the testimony of the whole world and in accordance of the first reports of the International Commission of Investigation that the Syrian Revolution began peacefully, and lasted well for more than six months peacefully, but the Syrian people which received live bullets in the chest for being  peacefully demanding the fall of the regime, and their faith and hope were hung on the reaction of the international community, the UN Security Council, the General Assembly of the United Nations, the international justice and the human rights organizations.
Unfortunately, the UN Security Council turned its back with deaf ears and did not issue any decision, seriously, to protect civilians or prevent murder and suspended its duty and commitment as an organization of peace, to ban international crimes against humanity and to ensure peace and security on the terms of the right of opposition to defend the people while in the meantime the Syrian regime were using chemical weapons against its people and many other issues.
All this eventually led to defection in the ranks of the Syrian army, and certainly these defections were a natural result of the crimes committed by the Syrian government army and at a later stage the People’s incubator to form cadres for the defense of peaceful protesters, and it is natural that the armed opposition groups located their positions within the communities which they originally found to protect them.
Fourth: The Syrian Organization for Human Rights considers that what is meant by crimes against humanity, in accordance with international standards and rules of international humanitarian law, is any act committed within the framework of a large-scale attack directed against any civilian population which includes the following:

Homicide, forcible transfer of populations, imprisonment and other severe deprivation of physical liberty, torture and attacks against bodily integrity, also various forms of sexual violence, and in brief  it means: the persecution of a political or racial, national, ethnic, cultural or religious group.
While the crime of genocide under the Convention dated 12/09/1948 means committing any of the following acts with the intent to achieve the total or partial extermination of a group on the basis of national or ethnic or religious by “killing members of the group or damaging their living conditions, and deliberately aiming to destroy them, either in whole or in part.”

War crimes were organized by the four Geneva Conventions which are related to the protection of civilians in armed conflict and the protection of prisoners of war or wounded in armed clashes.
A  quick glance at what happened in the provinces of Aleppo, Homs or Damascus, rural area of Damascus or Hasakah, Deir al-Zour, Idlib Hama Darra, Raqqa, and others, establishes without doubt, to everyone who has sight and insight, the effects of the use of fixed-wing aircraft and long-range ballistic missiles by the regime’s forces against the Syrian civilians. And it is enough to glance at the documented cases of mass murder and mass killings and torture that killed more than 1,500 Syrian citizens, and documented rape cases and mass arrests of people, which included hundreds of thousands and the disappearance of more than 70 thousand civilians of the Syrian citizen . . .  All this proves beyond any doubt who is the perpetrator of crimes against humanity.  Then, a quick look at some sections of the thousands of videos that depict forms of torture and what is permissible for the defected soldiers will open the door widely to the International Criminal Court, if the minimum element of shame becomes available for those who monopolized the decision to refer the criminal regime with their explicit and implicit partners to the International Criminal Court.

The Syrian Organization for Human Rights has condemned and denounced every criminal act perpetrated by the armed opposition groups, and we are demanding that those involved be tried, but also we believe that such crimes were not committed within a widespread framework of systematic act of crimes, and did not target groups of the civilian population on the basis of political or ideological, or national or ethnic, religious, cultural background, but remained within the framework of individual cases of criminal description and liable to criminal prosecution.  We do not believe these acts in any case reached the level of international crimes, and it is not necessary to put everyone in the same basket to prove to the world that we are neutral and objective.  This is a kind of  trap, which many international organizations for human rights have not avoided, bearing in mind, that we as The Syrian Organization for Human Rights, still respect with affection and appreciation the interest and the attention showed to us by those international organizations, in pointing out the tragedy of the slaughtered Syrian people to the civilized world.

Background:
With appreciation for the position of High Commissioner for Human Rights, Ms. Navi Pillay, who bravely holds the Security Council accountable and responsible for what is happening in Syria.
Also with appreciation for the position of the President of the General Assembly of the United Nations–the legitimate representative of the international community–who spoke about the massacres, taking place in Syria in full sight and hearing of the world.

Our perception in the Syrian Organization for Human Rights of the reasons by which the International Commission of investigation has acted to blur the distance between the crimes committed by the Syrian regime and the armed opposition, and put both of them in one basket, besides our understanding of the conspiracy by the global intelligence services in neglecting the rights of the Syrian people, and their future.

We also understand the pressure on the committee to refer to the statement issued by the Action Group for Syria in 06/30/2012, considering it as the sole exit for the Syrian crisis. That statement did not explicitly ask Assad, who is clinging to power, to step down.  Assad, who says that his patriotism does not allow him to discuss internal issues, or to discuss the form of the political system that he wants to rule next, with anyone who is not Syrian, by which he means the international envoy ….. ??

We understand the nature of the role played by Mr. William Hague, the British Foreign Secretary, who threatened Western capitals, two days before the publication of the report, by saying that the Syrians rebels, will threaten their capitals and undermine their kingdoms, after the elimination of the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Damascus …. Then the next day the British press launched a great campaign to prove that William Hague was trying to persuade Europeans to lift the arms embargo on Syrian rebels ……??
In the meantime, France had previously considered, that the first of March would be considered as a deadline for the expiration of sanctions, and that it would be considered as an opportunity to meet the demands of the Syrian opposition by providing them with weapons necessary for self-defense, but France soon suffered a state of inertia, apathy and deflation and left to Britain, which had previously has alluded to the danger European capitals raid by Syrian armed opposition, the task of convincing the Europeans to grant Syrian opposition political and diplomatic support and the necessary equipment to help save the lives of civilians, as described by British Foreign Minister.

It was natural for the European Union’s decision to be issued not to lift the ban on supplying the Syrian armed opposition with arms to enable them to exercise the right of self-defense and for popular incubators that were found to protect the Syrian armed opposition fighters.
In the same context we have U.S. President Barack Obama, who limited U.S. support for Syrian armed opposition fighters to what is called “non-lethal” support, as he described it, although God only knows what non-lethal assistance can do  in the face of of bombing by Russian Scud ballistic missiles or in the face of the new Iranian Conqueror, or when confronting the bombing of the military Mig Jet fighters or modern tanks, heavy artillery and other weapons of mass killing and genocide.

More than that, our question is how this “non-lethal aid” can reach its intended beneficiaries in the absence of safe corridors or buffer zones or no-fly zones.
The new US secretary of the State, Mr. John Kerry, has week reviewed his theory regarding the defense of American values ​​through the economy, and Kerry considered his theory to be measured according to money, business, and that “US diplomacy should be targeted at the service of the economy.”

Kerry has declared in a statement, and after the usual preamble including, “that Assad has lost his legitimacy and should step down,” that President Obama is still studying carefully “what are the right steps should be taken in order to help the Syrian people, especially, those Syrian civilians under bombardment.”  Syrian civilians under bombardment are awaiting the outcome of two years of study and scrutiny.

Also we find the Deputy of the U.S. Treasury Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, Mr. David Cohen, is taking the opportunity and the advantage of the U.S. embassy position in Baghdad, and in coordination and consultation apparently, with the Maliki government which is considered as the strategic ally of the Syrian regime, to dramatize and scare in panic the hearts and the fear of the Americans, and to change the mind of the decision-makers in Washington, taking advantage of pre-existing “Islamophobia”, and to warn of Islamic extremist groups, that they are pumping money and recruiting fighters to Syria and Iraq, for the purpose of undermining any  future attempt, or any efforts demand to protect civilians from genocide in Syria.

Meanwhile, the Russian foreign minister, Mr. Lavrov, to the beat of the war drums, marked the arrival of the military Russian vessels and ships such as Novotchirkask and Azov and Nikolai Velchenkov, loaded with munitions and deadly war weapons which were customized to kill the Syrian people, landing its shipment in the Syrian harbor.

Mr. Lavrov declared in a meeting with Walid al-Moallem, Foreign Minister of the Syrian regime, that he wants a free and independent Syria, where all its citizens and people live in peace and freedom and democracy. . .  But he forgot to tell us what flavor of democracy he wants for the Syrians—a democracy with the taste of Russian Scud missiles, or that of the new Iranian Conqueror missile, because there are two different flavors in this area of the world.

Many observers consider the “Conqueror 110” missile to have more momentum than the Scud, because it weighs 3 tons and it can hold a warhead weighs ½ ton, and has a range of 125  miles, and thus its smell blended with Syrian blood will have greater momentum and be more delicious for Russian Minister Lavrov, only there will be an exception if the Russian ships were loaded with the tactical offensive “Iskandar” land – land Rocket”, of, which range up to / 500 km/, or other missile systems and weapons of mass destruction, for in such a case, the flavor of Russian death can override the Iranian one.

– There is someone who stands behind this whole miraculous instinctual symphony … It is the extreme right in Tel Aviv  which is to be considered as the “Unknown Soldier” in this equation, and the secret behind everything that happens, in which the extremist Israeli prime minister, Netanyahu, could not hide his temper when he broke his suspicious silence, and in accordance with what has been already promoted by David Cohen in  Baghdad, said that the danger does not come from colonies Israel grows in the Palestinian territories in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, as a poisoned dagger in the chest of hope for just and comprehensive peace, but he said that the danger comes from the Syrian rebels, whom he described as the forces of a global jihad.  At the same time his defense minister, Ehud Barak, threatens military intervention to eliminate the Syrian armed opposition in the event of victory in Syria.

The Syrian Organization for Human Rights regrets the alignment of the UN Security Council behind the extreme mentality of the right-wing in Israel, which is built and based on maintaining a false image of an enemy to help it to ensure its remaining in power at the expense of the peace movement on one hand, and on the other hand to exploit the free world under the pretext of guaranteeing Israel’s qualitative and strategic superiority on the pretext of the presence of an axis of resistance and reluctance on its borders, Hizbollah and Syria and Iran.  This axis is detailed specifically according to the standards of Israel, so that it ensures the presence of a defanged and declawed enemy that roars and squawks and at the same time protects and fortifies its borders, and also maintains the instability in the region, and offers Israel a ready excuse for directing racism and arrogance towards more than a third of its population of Arabs and Muslims, a malicious game that has been exposed and for which the peoples neighboring Israel are paying the price in blood.
Damascus 6 – 3 – 2013

Board of Directors