In a major blow to the repressive regime of Syria, the United Nations’ main human rights body on Feb. 28 condemned Damascus for the “brutal” use of heavy weapons on residential areas, killing innocent people and persecuting opponents. It is its fourth rebuke to President Bashar Assad since an uprising began last year. The emergency meeting of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva also called for an immediate humanitarian cease-fire to end the fighting and bombardments in Syria.
The resolution to be adopted by the UN Human Rights Council condemns “the use of heavy artillery and tanks to attack residential areas … that have led to the death of thousands of innocent civilians.” It also voices alarm at the humanitarian crisis in areas lacking food, medicine and fuel and calls for aid agencies to be allowed to deliver vital supplies to civilians in heavily-hit areas, especially Homs, Deraa and Zabadani in Syria.
Assad sent units of an elite armoured division into Homs yesterday as rebel-held districts came under the heaviest bombardment of a three-week-old offensive, opposition sources in the city said. The Human Rights Council in Geneva, opened its annual four-week session on Feb. 27, days after UN investigators accused the highest levels of the Syrian government and army of ordering crimes against humanity including murder, rape and torture. “The commission of inquiry clearly established that crimes against humanity are being committed,” French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said in an interview with Swiss television. “As long as we have not halted the massacres, we are impotent, but we are not inactive,” Juppe said. Juppe told the forum the Assad government should be referred to the International Criminal Court (ICC).