Hundreds of European, American, and Arab writers, thinkers, scientists, researchers, and artists issued a statement condemning the crimes of the Assad regime and calling for bringing him to trial as a war criminal. The statement urged international institutions to assume their role after the UN Security Council became a hostage to the Russian and Chinese vetoes.
Signatories of the statement stressed the need for urgent, concrete action to put an end to the ongoing crimes by the regime against the Syrian people.
“The civilian population in Syria are still being bombed and starved to force them to flee their homes,” the statement said.
“Every day brings with it fresh news about the tragedy the Syrian people are going through and about the atrocious crimes being committed by the barbaric Assad regime,” the statement added.
The signatories stressed that the Assad regime and its Russian and Iranian allies bear responsibility for the tragedy unfolding in Syria.
The statement condemned Russia’s repeated use of the veto in the Security Council to shield the Assad regime against punishment and accountability.
It called on European countries to give up their do-nothing policy and explicitly condemn the grave violations regardless of the perpetrators.
Moreover, the signatories called for supporting the mechanism adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 21, 2016 which called for an investigation of war crimes in Syria and the prosecution of those responsible for the most serious crimes since 2011.
The statement called for launching judicial procedures on the international and national levels to investigate the ongoing war crimes in Syria as well as stop the crimes of the Assad regime. It also called for forcing the Assad regime to allow the UN Commission of Inquiry to visit Syria to investigate torture against detainees in the prisons of the Assad regime.
The statement comes nearly a month after Amnesty International released a harrowing report about regime’s mass hangings of over 13,000 detainees in the Saydnaya Prison near Damascus. It also comes amid reports by rights groups about child sexual abuse in Assad’s prisons and other violations of human rights. (Source: Syrian Coalition’s Media Department + Agencies)
