Syrian human rights groups called on the European Union, Great Britain and the United States to boycott the UN Conference on Disarmament because it will be chaired by the Assad regime. The conference began on Tuesday and will continue throughout the next month.
Up to ten human rights groups said that participation in the conference is an affront to “human values” and is tantamount to “awarding a medal of honor for the perpetrator of such serious crimes.”
The rights groups condemned allowing the Assad regime to preside over the conference, calling on the international community to retract this decision. It also called for holding an international conference and pressuring the UN Security Council to establish an international tribunal for war criminals in Syria, chiefly among them is the Assad regime.”
The rights groups pointed out that allowing the Assad regime to take over the presidency of a UN conference on disarmament and removal of weapons of mass destruction and nuclear weapons was “an attempt to rehabilitate the Assad regime. They stressed that the Assad regime is responsible for crimes against humanity and genocide against the Syrian people using internationally prohibited weapons, including chemical weapons attacks in dozens of attacks.”
Meanwhile, Society for Threatened Peoples, a German-based NGO and human rights organization, issued an appeal demanding that the German government and EU countries not to participate in the conference as long as the representative of the Assad regime presides over the international platform.
“It is unreasonable for a government that has been accused of using weapons of mass destruction and responsible for the killing of hundreds of thousands of civilians to head a UN body and to decide who can speak and who cannot,” the NGO stressed. It called on the international community not to allow the dictator Bashar al-Assad to return to the international arena.
Meanwhile, the US ambassador to the UN in Geneva said on Tuesday this country will walk out of the conference in protest against the Assad regime’s presidency of the conference. He told reporters that the US would take other measures throughout Syria’s presidency of the conference.
In a letter sent Saturday to 18 countries, President of the Syrian Coalition Abdurrahman Mustafa called for a boycott of the forum during the four weeks of Assad’s presidency
President Mustafa warned that allowing the Assad regime to chair such conference risks “undermining the UN’s credibility and the integrity of disarmament framework.” He underscored that “the Assad regime’s use of deadly chemical and unconventional weapons and its illegal pursuit of nuclear weapons is a breach of its disarmament obligations and run counter to the objectives and fundamental principles of the Conference on Disarmament.” (Source: Syrian Coalition’s Media Department + Agencies)
