U.N. Investigators Cite Atrocities in Syria (both sides, of course)
As Western and regional powers prepared to step up the fight against Sunni militants of the Islamic State, United Nations investigators presented details Tuesday of more atrocities committed by Islamic extremists and the government in Syria, warning that there could be no battlefield solution to the “madness” in the civil war there.
In addition to the killing of two American journalists, James Foley and Steven J. Sotloff, and a British aid worker, David Cawthorne Haines, the Islamic State “has continued to subject scores of Syrians to the same fate in public squares in the north and east of the country,” Mr. Pinheiro told the council, describing the terror of communities in large swaths of Syria that it controls.
Despite the extremes of violence committed by Islamic militants, Mr. Pinheiro said, the Syrian government “remains responsible for the majority of the civilian casualties, killing and maiming scores of civilians daily,” describing killing “from a distance” by shelling and aerial bombardment and “up close at checkpoints and in its interrogation rooms.”
Mr. Pinheiro recalled that the panel had repeatedly urged the United Nations Security Council and influential states to refer Syria to the International Criminal Court and to push for a political settlement. Their inaction “nourished the violence” consuming Syria, he told the Human Rights Council. “Its most recent beneficiary is ISIS,” he said, using an acronym for the Islamic State.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/17/world/middleeast/un-investigators-cite-atrocities-in-syria.html
The UN Human Rights Council must feel obligated to continue to investigate and publish the continuing human rights abuses in Syria. For the most part, the world seems not to care or only be interested in protecting one side or the other.
It is no wonder that the Syrian refugee problem is the most serious since WWII.
