UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay yesterday slammed the brutality of a crackdown on protestors by government forces in Libya and Syria, saying the actions were shocking in their disregard for human rights.
“The brutality and magnitude of measures taken by the governments in Libya and now Syria have been particularly shocking in their outright disregard for basic human rights,” Pillay told the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
More than 1,000 people have been killed and 10,000 others arrested since the revolt began in Syria, rights groups said.
On Sunday, Syrian security forces shot dead seven people and wounded more than 100 in and around Talbisa and Rastan, according to an activist.
“Resort to lethal or excessive force against peaceful demonstrators not only violates fundamental rights, including the right to life, but serves to exacerbate tensions and tends to breed a culture of violence,” Pillay said.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights also renewed a call to the Syrian regime to allow a fact-finding mission to visit the country.
She said authorities in Yemen and Bahrain have both responded to separate mission requests, with Yemen agreeing to a visit late next month and dates to be worked out with Bahrain.
The UN Human Rights Council had ordered that a mission be sent to probe the situation in Syria during its April 29 special session on the situation in the country.
Meanwhile, South Africa President Jacob Zuma was on his way to Tripoli yesterday for talks to end Libya’s conflict, as calls mounted in the international community for Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi to stand down.
Ahead of the trip, Zuma’s office said its main objectives include an immediate ceasefire, enabling the delivery of humanitarian aid and adopting and implementing reforms to eliminate the causes of the conflict. However, it rejected as “misleading” reports the talks would focus on an exit strategy for Qaddafi, saying the visit was part of African Union efforts to end the conflict between his forces and rebels fighting to oust him.
Libyan state television said that Zuma was going to discuss the implementation of the AU “roadmap” for peace, as it reported fresh NATO raids on the Nafusa mountains in the far west and the town of Bani Walid, near Misrata.
Mustafa Abdul Jalil, who heads the rebel National Transitional Council, welcomed a call by G8 world powers on Friday for Qaddafi to stand down.
“The position taken by the G8 is reflective of the will of the international community as well as the demands and aspirations of the Libyan people,” Jalil said in the rebels’ eastern stronghold city of Benghazi.
The Libyan regime responded by saying any initiative to resolve the crisis would have to go through the African Union.
Elsewhere on the humanitarian front, the oil chief in the National Transitional Council appealed to the international community to come to the financial rescue of the anti- Qaddafi camp.
“I don’t have any resources, not a cent,” Ali Tarhuni told reporters in Benghazi. “We’re in a critical situation. Our friends must remember that we are at war.”
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