24 rights groups urge US and EU to confront Libyan massacres in UN Security Council and Human Rights

[maddezmom]

An international coalition of 24 rights groups urged world powers to convene the UN Security Council and the Human Rights Council to protect Libyan civilians from government killings, in a letter sent today to the U.S., the EU and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. (See full text below)


Signatories include the U.S.-based National Endowment for Democracy and Physicians for Human Rights, the Geneva-based UN Watch, and 21 other groups from Switzerland, India, Liberia, Italy, Nigeria, Germany, Sudan, Venezuela, Somalia, Thailand, and the United Kingdom.


The letter asserts that the widespread atrocities committed by Libya against its own people are "particularly odious" actions that amount to war crimes, requiring member states to take action through the Security Council under the responsibility to protect doctrine.


The appeal also calls for an emergency session of the Human Rights Council, in which Libya's membership on that body would be suspended, and an international inquiry team dispatched to he country.


"The muted response of the US and the EU to the Libyan atrocities is not only a let-down to the many Libyans risking their lives for freedom, but a shirking of their obligations, as members of the Security Council and the Human Rights Council, to protect peace and human rights, and to prevent war crimes," said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, and an international lawyer who represents Libyan torture victims. instead of urgency and action -- the EU is failing the victims. It's time for basic human rights to come before oil," said Neuer.


more:http://pr-usa.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=632323&Itemid=28

[Solly Mack]

1. K&R