Global Inaction Encourages Syria Regime to Kill, Says Opposition
Syria's opposition Wednesday accused the Damascus regime of exploiting "global inaction" to carry out crimes against humanity, such as the slaughter of nearly 80 men in the battlefront city of Aleppo.
The Syrian National Coalition, the main opposition alliance, in a statement called on international rights groups to investigate Tuesday's massacre in the northern city of Aleppo and "bring the killers to justice."
The "ongoing global inaction towards human rights violations in Syria encourages the killers to continue their crimes....the extreme complacency in the positions of most countries ... gives the green light for the perpetrators of genocide to continue what they are doing," it said
Rebel fighters blamed regime troops for the killings while Syrian authorities accused the hardline jihadist group Al-Nusra Front of having carried out the latest in a long list of massacres committed in Syria's 22-month conflict.
In its statement, the National Coalition expressed its "shock at the new horrific massacre committed by (President Bashar) Assad's regime against innocent civilians".
It called on the divided United Nations Security Council to refer the Syrian issue to The Hague-based International Criminal Court.
"The world has abandoned its moral duty and political commitment to the Syrian people, leaving the criminal Syrian regime to kill scores of citizens using the most brutal and cowardly tactics," the statement said.
"The silence of the world and its deceitful inability to curb the killings of the regime has allowed us to reach this stage where things are spinning out of control and gravely threatening the region and the world."
Syrian president "Bashar Assad and all who contributed to the massacre must be prosecuted for committing a crime against humanity," it said.
Twenty-two months of conflict have now left well over 60,000 dead, according to the United Nations, which on Wednesday seeks $1.5 billion in humanitarian funding for beleaguered Syrians at a conference in Kuwait.
The U.N. Security Council has been paralyzed on Syria for more than a year. Russia and China have vetoed three Western-drafted resolutions which would simply have threatened sanctions.
Russia accuses the West of seeking regime change through force and insists it cannot make Assad stand down. The United States and its allies back the opposition stance that there can be no talks with Assad.
Source: Agence France Presse
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