UN Secretary General Condemns Assad Regime in Syria
June 8, 2012
United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon informed the General Assembly yesterday that UN monitors were shot at trying to get to the scene of yet another massacre in Syria. According to opposition activists, at least 78 people in the village of Qubair, near Hama, were slaughtered on June 6 by forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The victims included as many as 40 women and children. Condemning “this unspeakable barbarity,” Ban stated that for many months it had been evident that Assad and his government “have lost all legitimacy” as well as “its fundamental humanity.”
On May 29, major Western nations expelled Syrian diplomats in response to the May 25 massacre of 108 civilians in the Houla region of Syria. (Houla is an area northwest of the city of Homs, center of the 14-month uprising against the Assad regime.) Outrage over the killings–one of the gravest atrocities in the uprising–prompted the governments of Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States to inform the various Syrian legations that top diplomats were to leave within the week.
Syria. World Book map; map data © MapQuest.com, Inc.
Members of the UN Human Rights Council believe that the Syrian army and the feared shabiha militia may have carried out both massacres. It is widely believed that the shabiha, consisting mainly of Alawite Muslims, is the Assad regime’s hired death squad. (Alawites are a mystical Sunni religious group prominent in Syria. The Assad family and most Syrian government officials are members of the sect.)
The UN Security Council has condemned the Syrian government “in the strongest possible terms.” The council pronounced the “outrageous use of violence against civilians” a violation of international law. At least 10,000 people have died in Syria since protests against the Assad regime broke out in March 2011.
Additional World Book articles:
- Diplomacy
- Hafez al-Assad
- Middle East: From Fall to Spring (a special report)
- Syria 2011 (a Back in Time article)
