Syrian Coalition Protests Over Speech of Arab Lawyers Union Chief

The Syrian Coalition’s Legal Committee denounces the speech made by the head of the Arab Lawyers Union Sameh Ashour who called for “defending Syria against terrorism,” during the Union’s latest conference. Head of the Legal Committee Haitham al-Maleh sent a letter of protest to the Secretary General the Arab Lawyers Union in Cairo. The letter stresses that the content of Ashour’s speech contradicts the principles of human rights and the decisions of the Arab Lawyers Union on Syria. It also includes a brief on the situation in Syria since the outbreak of the revolution in March 2011, and Assad’s admission at the start of the revolution that it remained peaceful for the first six month despite the fact that his armed forces killed 5,000 civilians and deployed 3,000 tanks all over Syria’s territory. The letter concludes with the death toll resulting from Assad’s war on the Syrian people, citing 2,192 massacres, 254,741 dead of whom 13,313 are children, in addition to approximately eight million internally displaced people and four million refugees in neighboring countries as wells as the arbitrary detention of 1000s of people and 1000s of cases of rape of women. (Source: Syrian Coalition)