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Amnesty international statement
on fresh evidence of Syrian armed forces’ ongoing crimes against humanity:
The shocking escalation
in unlawful killings, torture, arbitrary detention and the wanton destruction
of homes in Syria demonstrates just how urgent the need for decisive
international action to stem the tide of increasingly widespread attacks on
civilians by government forces and militias which act with utter impunity,
Amnesty International said in a new report today.
The 70-page report Deadly Reprisals
provides fresh evidence of widespread as well as systematic violations,
including crimes against humanity and war crimes, being perpetrated as part of
state policy to exact revenge against communities suspected of supporting the
opposition and to intimidate people into submission.
“This disturbing new
evidence of an organized pattern of grave abuses highlights the pressing need
for decisive international action to stem the tide of increasingly widespread
attacks against the civilian population, including crimes against humanity and
war crimes, committed by government forces and militias with utter impunity,”
said Donatella Rovera, Amnesty International’s Senior Crisis Adviser, who
recently spent several weeks investigating human rights violations in northern
Syria.
"For more than a
year the UN Security Council has dithered, while a human rights crisis unfolded
in Syria. It must now break the impasse and take concrete action to end
to these violations and to hold to account those responsible.”
Although not granted
official permission by the Syrian authorities to enter the country, Amnesty
International was able to investigate the situation on the ground in northern
Syria, and has concluded that Syrian government forces and militias are
responsible for grave human rights violations and serious violations of
international humanitarian law amounting to crimes against humanity and war
crimes.
Amnesty International
visited 23 towns and villages in the Aleppo and Idlib governorates, including
areas where Syrian government forces launched large-scale attacks including
during negotiations over the implementation of the UN-Arab League-sponsored
six-point ceasefire agreement in March/April.
In every town and
village visited grieving families described to Amnesty International how their
relatives – young and old and including children - were dragged away and shot
dead by soldiers - who in some cases then set the victims’ bodies on fire.
Soldiers and shabiha
militias burned down homes and properties and fired indiscriminately into
residential areas, killing and injuring civilian bystanders. Those who
were arrested, including the sick and elderly, were routinely tortured,
sometimes to death. Many have been subjected to enforced disappearance;
their fate remains unknown.
“Everywhere I went, I
met distraught residents who asked why the world is standing by and doing
nothing,” said Donatella Rovera.
“Such inaction by the international community
ultimately encourages further abuses. As the situation continues to
deteriorate and the civilian death toll rises daily, the international
community must act to stop the spiraling violence”.
The government
crackdown has been targeting towns and villages seen as opposition strongholds,
whether the site of clashes with Free Syria Army (FSA) forces or where the
opposition remains peaceful.
In Aleppo, Syria’s
largest city, on several occasions in the last week of May, Amnesty
International watched uniformed security forces and plainclothes shabiha
militia members firing live rounds against peaceful demonstrators, killing and
injuring protesters and passers-by, including children.
The patterns of abuses
committed in these areas are not isolated, and have been widely reported
elsewhere in the country, including in the attack by Syrian forces on Houla on
25 May. According to the United Nations, 108 individuals, including 49 children
and 34 women, were killed there.
Since the outbreak of
pro-reform protests in February 2011, Amnesty International has received the
names of more than 10,000 people who have been killed during the unrest,
although the actual figure may be considerably higher.
The report underpins
findings from other investigations into the situation in Syria including the UN
Secretary General’s report on children and armed conflict, which highlighted
that, over the last year, government forces were responsible for “killing and
maiming, arbitrary arrest, detention, torture and ill-treatment” of children as
young as nine years old.
In the report, Amnesty
International again calls on the Security Council to refer the situation in
Syria to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), and to
impose an arms embargo on Syria with the aim of stopping the flow of weapons to
the Syrian government.
It urges the
governments of the Russian Federation and China in particular to halt
immediately transfers to the Syrian government of all weapons, munitions,
military, security, and policing equipment, training and personnel.
It also calls on the
Security Council to implement an asset freeze against President Bashar al-Assad
and others who may be involved in ordering or perpetrating crimes under
international law.
Amnesty International
has made numerous recommendations to the Syrian authorities, which, if
implemented, would help to curtail the widespread violations – amounting to
crimes against humanity or war crimes - currently taking place.
But it appears the
Syrian government has no intention of ending, let alone investigating, these
crimes.
“The Syrian
government’s attempts to block access to Amnesty International, other human
rights monitors and the international media, have failed to shield it from
scrutiny. This report provides further detailed evidence that the Syrian
authorities are engaged in a sustained, widespread and brutal attack against
the civilian population,” said Donatella Rovera.
