Genocide Watch is issuing a Genocide Emergency Alert: Genocide and Mass Atrocities Emergency – Syria
(June 8, 2012) – Since 1970, Syria has been under the repressive rule of the al-Assad family regime and the socialist Ba’ath Party. Political tensions have been caused by opposing ideologies of the ruling Alawite minority – Baathist socialism – and the Sunni Muslim majority (three quarters of the population) which favors adherence to moderate Islamic law. Since the 1980’s, the Assad government has become increasingly authoritarian and repressive. Torture and killing of opposition leaders became policy.
During the Arab Spring of 2011, which swept authoritarian regimes out of power across North Africa, pro-democracy protests began in Syria in early March. The eruption of mass anti-government protests quickly spread throughout the country. Violent attacks on civilians by the al-Assad regime have escalated in brutality throughout the past year. When Genocide Watch issued its Genocide Warning for Syria in February 2012, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights reported the death toll exceeding 5,400. Today, reports by the Syrian Network for Human Rights and the Damascus Centre for Human Rights Studies place the death toll around 14,000. Thousands more have fled as refugees to neighboring countries like Jordan and Lebanon. Despite government attempts to cut off the internet, exclude reporters, and even to forbid the UN to investigate the Houla massacre, information on the mass atrocities has been obtained from victims and witnesses by the U.N. Human Rights Council, Human Rights Watch and the international press.
The U.N. Supervision Mission in Syria (UNSMIS) deployed 300 unarmed monitors to oversee a “cease-fire” that never took effect. UNSMIS has stood by and watched as civilians were slaughtered. The Houla massacre on May 25 and the al-Qubayr massacre on June 7 killed over 200 civilians, many of them women and children executed by gunshots to the back of the head. Eyewitnesses have testified that the massacres were perpetrated by the Syrian Army and Alawite militias. President Bashar al-Assad denies involvement in the mass killings, claiming terrorists are behind the country’s uprising. But the U.N. Human Rights Council has condemned the Syrian government for committing the massacres.
The evidence is now conclusive that the al-Assad regime is committing intentional crimes against humanity. Among the crimes the al-Assad regime is committing are: indiscriminant, widespread attacks on civilians, arbitrary detention of thousands in the political opposition, rape of detainees, widespread torture- including torture and murder of children- and denial of food, medicines and other essential resources to civilians. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan warns that Syria stands on the brink of a “full-blown civil war”. The early warning signs and stages of genocide in Syria are:
http://genocidewatch.org/syria.html
