Following the proceedings of the emergency session of the U.N. Human Rights Council Wednesday, the Syrian National Coalition met to discuss the deteriorating situation in Syria and the rapid developments in the city of Qusayr.
The Coalition welcomes the draft resolution issued by the Council, and thanks the sponsoring countries, chiefly Qatar, Turkey and the United States, in addition to the countries that voted in favor of the resolution.
The Coalition wishes to clarify the following points:
We call for international efforts to halt the Assad regime's basic human rights violations across Syria. The international efforts have so far failed to deter the regime’s crimes of genocide or halt the systematic killing of hundreds of innocent Syrians each day.
In addition to the international community's moves to address the situation in Qusayr at the at the Council level, we call on the Council stop to the daily human rights violations committed against the Syrian people.
We call on the Council to demand Hezbollah's withdrawal, to hold them accountable for the crimes in Qusayr, and for their complicity in the murder of innocent civilians.
The Coalition emphasizes that human rights violations committed by some members of the Syrian opposition – if any – are limited and isolated incidents and have never taken a systematic approach. They cannot in any way be compared to the human rights violations of the Assad regime against the Syrian people, which have been ordered by the highest levels of the military and political leadership.
The Coalition has spared no efforts to prevent opposition forces from committing gross human rights violations. The latest of these efforts is an awareness raising campaign, 'Fighter, not a Killer', aimed at Free Syrian Army soldiers, which was launched in cooperation with a number of international and local human rights organizations. We welcome support from other international institutions in this area, in particular the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).
The Coalition has already referred the issue of crimes committed in Syria to the International Criminal Court and would like to take the opportunity to renew this call. We ask the countries that are protecting the Assad regime to stop using their veto power at the U.N. Security Council to block this referral.
Any political settlement that may take place in the future cannot be at the expense of the innocent Syrian people. It can only be based on the principles of justice and accountability for those who have committed crimes – without impunity.
It is clear that the real criminals in Syria are the members of the Assad regime. As a sign of the Coalition's readiness to cooperate fully with all international human rights mechanisms, the Coalition calls on the International Investigation Commission, formed under Human Rights Council Resolution S/17 to enter liberated areas, to exercise its mission and fulfill its mandate, with the full cooperation and support of all components of the Coalition.
We pray for mercy for our martyrs, health for our wounded, and freedom for our detainees.
Long live Syria and its people, free and with honor.
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Translated and edited by The Syrian Observe
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