Annan, in Syria, calls for accountability
By the CNN Wire Staff
May 28, 2012 -- Updated 1528 GMT
(2328 HKT)
(CNN) -- Upon his arrival in Damascus, Syria, joint U.N.-Arab
League special envoy Kofi Annan called Monday for those responsible for
Friday's massacre of 108 people in the town of Houla to be held responsible and
for his six-point plan to be implemented.
"This was an appalling crime,
and the Security Council has rightly condemned it," he said in a statement.
"Those responsible for these
brutal crimes must be held accountable. I understand that the government is
also investigating. It is the Syrian people, ordinary citizens of this great
country, who are paying the highest price in this conflict.
"Our goal is to stop this
suffering. It must end and it must end now."
Annan demanded that the government
of Bashar al-Assad "take bold steps to signal that it is serious in its
intention to resolve this crisis peacefully, and for everyone involved to help
create the right context for a credible political process. And this message of
peace is not only for the government, but for everyone with a gun."
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| Massacre Victims on white linen. |
He added, "The six-point plan
has to be implemented comprehensively. And this is not happening."
Annan said he plans to have
"serious and frank" talks with al-Assad and others.
But a rebel leader said Annan's six-point plan is
already "dead" following the killings in Houla, a suburb of the
anti-government bastion of Homs. U.N. monitors in Syria said 49 children were
among the dead.
Al-Assad's regime insists it was not
behind the massacre and blames terrorist groups. Throughout the uprising
against the government, Syria has blamed violence on "armed terrorist
groups."
Opposition leaders say the massacre
is the latest in Syria's crackdown against protesters
.
But Syrian U.N. representative
Bashar al-Jaafari, who called the deaths "an appalling, horrific
unjustified and unjustifiable crime," insisted Monday that the Syrian
government is working to find the people responsible. He called on the U.N.
Security Council to "convene to define those who arm, host, harbor and
encourage the terrorist groups to continue their violence in Syria and bring
them to justice," the state-run news agency SANA reported.
Jaafari railed against "member
states" of the Security Council who are helping the opposition.
"Those who are very interested in halting violence and making the
comprehensive national dialogue in Syria a success should stop interfering in
our internal affairs and should stop arming, hosting, funding and protecting
the armed terrorist groups in my country," he said.
British Foreign Secretary William
Hague, who has expressed outrage about the massacre, was in Russia on Monday
seeking to persuade Russian officials to pressure the Syrian regime to comply
with Annan's peace plan.
But after Hague met with Russian
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, there was no clear sign that international
action would ratchet up.
"It sounds very noble to say
Russia is supporting the Syrian government, and when it stops supporting the
Syrian government, everything will be fine," Lavrov told reporters.
But in reality, he said, "We do
not support the Syrian government. We are supporting the Kofi Annan plan that
addresses both the Syrian government and the armed opposition. ... We have to
be objective."
After Friday's massacre in Houla,
rebel leaders once again implored the international community for airstrikes
against regime forces.
Meanwhile, residents of Houla were
grieving as opposition activists and residents blamed al-Assad's regime for the
bloodbath.
"By God, I washed the dead
bodies of nine children. One was less than 9 months old!" a man screamed
to a U.N. observer. "Why are they treating us like animals? We are humans.
Did the infant carry an RPG? Was he a fighter? It was a baby, he had a pacifier
in his mouth."
Images from Houla show a room
crammed with the mangled and bloody bodies of children -- some with their skulls
torn open.
The killings reignited international fury against
al-Assad's regime for its 14-month crackdown on dissidents seeking an end to
his rule.
On Sunday, some U.N. Security
Council members condemned the Houla attacks "that involved a series of
government artillery and tank shellings on a residential neighborhood" as
well as the killings of civilians by gunshots fired at close-range.
In Jerusalem, Defense Minister Ehud
Barak said Israel supports the U.N. Security Council's condemnation of the
atrocities in Syria.
"The pictures of the children's
mutilated bodies are both shocking and disturbing," he told a group of
visiting U.S. senators. "We call upon the nations of the world to unite
and act immediately to stop the ongoing massacre of innocents."
U.S. National Security Council
spokesman Tommy Vietor said the United States was horrified by "credible
reports" of the massacre, "including stabbing and ax attacks on women
and children."
And some called Syria's promise of
an investigation a farce.
"There's no way a Syrian
military commission can credibly investigate this horrendous crime when so much
evidence suggests pro-government forces were responsible," said Sarah Leah
Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch.
"Annan should insist that Syria grant access to the U.N. commission of
inquiry to investigate this and other grave crimes."
Over the weekend, the rebel Free
Syrian Army said the Annan plan was "dead" after the Houla massacre.
"The joint command of the FSA
inside Syria announces that it is no longer possible to abide by the peace plan
brokered by Kofi Annan, (which) the regime is taking advantage of in order to
commit more massacres against our unarmed civilians," Free Syrian Army
spokesman Col. Qasim Saad Eddine said in a video posted Saturday.
"This is a clear evidence that
Kofi Annan's plan is dead and a clear indication that Bashar Assad and his
criminal gang do not understand anything but the language of force and
violence," Eddine said. He urged the U.N. Security Council to "issue
urgent and swift resolutions to save Syria, its people and the entire region by
forming an international coalition mandated by the UNSC to launch airstrikes"
against regime forces and their strategic points.
Violence continued Monday, with the
Local Coordination Committees of Syria reporting 26 deaths.
U.N. officials say more than 9,000
people, most of them civilians, have been killed and tens of thousands more
have been uprooted since the crisis began in March 2011. Opposition groups
report a death toll of more than 11,000 people.
CNN can confirm neither details from
Syria nor the authenticity of videos, as the Syrian government limits access by
foreign journalists.
CNN's Saad Abedine, Mohammed
Jamjoom, Marilia Brocchetto and Holly Yan contributed to this report.
U.N. condemns Syrian killings; toll in massacre rises
as violence goes on
By the CNN Wire Staff
May 28, 2012 -- Updated 0258 GMT
(1058 HKT)
CNN) -- The U.N. Security Council on Sunday condemned the
weekend massacre of more than 100 civilians in Syria, with members casting
blame on government forces for the deaths, while violence continued to rage on
the ground.
U.N. military observers said the
toll from the Friday assault on the village of Houla included dozens of women
and children. After consultations Sunday afternoon, Security Council members
condemned "attacks that involved a series of government artillery and tank
shellings on a residential neighborhood," as well as the killings of
civilians by close-range gunshots and "severe physical abuse."
"Such outrageous use of force
against the civilian population constitutes a violation of applicable
international law and of the commitments of the Syrian government under United
Nations Security Council Resolutions 2042 and 2043 to cease violence in all its
forms, including the cessation of use of heavy weapons in population
centers," said Azerbaijan's Deputy Ambassador Tofig Musayev, who presided
over the meeting. The members demanded that Syrian troops immediately pull its
troops and heavy weapons back from cities in accordance with an April
cease-fire.
Bashar Jaafari, Syria's U.N.
ambassador, told reporters the statement wasn't blaming his government for all
the killings, since the statement left the cause of most deaths ambiguous. He
said most of the deaths were caused by gunfire, and the council statement did
not specifically assign blame for those fatalities.
And Russia, a longtime ally of
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, believes "it still remains unclear what
happened and what triggered what," as Russian charge d'affaires Alexander
Pankin put it.
But German Ambassador Peter Wettig
said there was "clear evidence" connecting the government to the deaths.
"The evidence is not murky, and there is a clear footprint of the
government in this massacre," Wettig said. And Martin Brines, the French
deputy ambassador, said a briefing by the head of the U.N. observer mission in
Syria "clearly shows the responsibility of the Syrian government in
failing to protect its civilians as well, as attacking them directly."
U.N. observers in Syria said the
toll from the Houla massacre had risen to 108 on Sunday, including 34 women and
49 children under the age of 10, said Sausan Ghosheh, the observer mission's
spokeswoman. Horrific images of the bodies in Houla spread across the internet,
fueling fresh protests by Syrian opposition groups in several cities.
Videos posted Sunday on YouTube show
demonstrations in cities around the country, including Damascus, Daraa, Idlib,
and the suburbs of Hama.
"Oh Houla, we are with you
until death," protesters chanted in Daraa. And a demonstration in Idlib
showed a U.N. vehicle among protesters. In the Hama suburbs, demonstrators called
for President Bashar al-Assad to step down.
But the 14-month-old clampdown
continued, with opposition activists reporting another 51 people -- including
11 children and four women -- killed across the country on Sunday. Twenty-five
of those deaths took place in Hama, where heavy shelling was reported, they
said.
Opposition activists said killings
began with a mortar bombardment following Friday prayers, followed by a rampage
by government-allied militias. Video posted over the weekend showed opposition
activists displaying the bloodied remains of more than 10 children, including
some with limbs blown off or skulls torn open. In another, medics treated a
crying infant whose chest was covered in bandages.
Syria has denied its troops were
behind the bloodbath in Houla, and Jafaari denounced what he called a
"tsunami of lies" against his government. He called the deaths
"an appalling, horrific unjustified and unjustifiable crime" and
vowed Syria's government had launched a national commission to investigate them.
"Whoever committed these crimes
will be held accountable by the Syrian authorities, by the Syrian government's
law," he said.
In state-run media, the Syrian
regime said "al Qaeda-linked terrorist groups committed two horrible
massacres against a number of families in the towns of al-Shumariyeh and Taldo
in the countryside of Homs province."
The state report also showed
gruesome images of children spattered with blood.
CNN can not independently confirm
details from Syria nor the authenticity of videos, however, as the Syrian
government strictly limits access by foreign journalists.
But Alex Thomson, a reporter for
Britain's ITV television network who was in Houla, said its residents appeared
to be voting with their feet.
"There are lots of civilians in
the rebel-held areas. They are not apparently frightened of the fighters. They
are speaking openly to the United Nations," Thomson told CNN. "In the
areas of the town held by the army, there is nobody -- it's a ghost town."
U.N. human rights chief Navi Pillay
called for the situation in Syria to be referred to the International Criminal
Court.
"There should be an immediate
and unfettered investigation of the incident by an independent and impartial
international body," she said. "The Syrian government has a legal and
moral responsibility to fully assist such an investigation, and to take
concrete steps to prevent any similar acts."
The New York-based Human Rights
Watch similarly demanded an investigation and echoed the call for the U.N.
Security Council to refer Syria to the ICC.
Citing survivors to the violence in
Houla, the group reported that armed men dressed in military clothes attacked
homes and executed families, though witnesses did not know whether the men were
members of the army or a pro-government militia.
The group recounted the experience
of a 10-year-old boy, who saw his 13-year-old friend shot.
The Syrian crisis began in March
2011, when peaceful demonstrations modeled on the "Arab Spring"
uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt sprang up across Syria. Al-Assad's government
responded by turning police and troops on demonstrators -- but the protests
spread across the country, with defecting soldiers taking up up arms on behalf
of the opposition.
A cease-fire agreement, brokered by
former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's office, has been in place since
April 12 as part of a six-point peace plan. But Col. Qasim Saad Eddine, a
spokesman for the rebel Free Syrian Army, said Saturday that it was "no
longer possible to abide by the peace plan" after the Houla killings.
U.N. officials say more than 9,000
people, mostly civilians, have died and tens of thousands have been uprooted
since the uprising began in March 2011. Opposition groups report a death toll
of more than 11,000 people.
Sunday's Security Council session
came a day ahead of a scheduled meeting between Syrian officials and Annan, the
joint U.N.-Arab League special envoy on the crisis. Meanwhile, British Foreign
Secretary William Hague was headed to Moscow for talks in hopes of putting
Russian pressure on al-Assad.
"We have had many differences
of view with Russia at the Security Council, but Russia does support the Annan
plan," Hague said in a statement from his office. "And so I hope
Russia will redouble its efforts to get the Assad regime to implement that
plan. It's not in the interests of Russia, just as it's not in the interests of
anybody in the world, for Syria to descend in to an even bloodier situation and
into full scale civil war and that is now the danger."
A U.N. report issued Friday said Syrian
forces are still using heavy weapons in many areas despite the April
cease-fire, and "The overall level of violence in the country remains
quite high" despite the presence of U.N. monitors. Monitors have heard the
sound of shelling in cities and towns and seen the aftereffects, their report
states, while Syrian authorities say they were coming under fire from rebel
troops.
Meanwhile, opposition groups
effectively control "significant parts of some cities" the monitors
state. But the government's stepped-up security crackdown "has led to
massive violations of human rights" by Syrian troops and pro-government
militias, the report states.
The United States joined the
condemnation of the Sunday afternoon. National Security Council spokesman Tommy
Vietor said the United States was horrifed by "credible reports" of
the massacre, "including stabbing and ax attacks on women and
children."
"These acts serve as a vile
testament to an illegitimate regime that responds to peaceful political protest
with unspeakable and inhuman brutality," Vietor said in a written
statement.
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