“We demand access to the international media, we demand the protection of civilians,” they said, calling for fresh demonstrations on Friday, the Muslim day of rest and prayers. AL ARABIYA – AGENCIES
Syria on Thursday sent its security forces storming into a northwestern village where they killed three military defectors, rights activists said, as opposition appealed to the international community to send in human rights monitors to help deter military attacks on civilians. Pro-democracy activists, meanwhile, called for the United Nations to send international observers to Syria. “The Syrian people call on the United Nations to adopt a resolution to set up a permanent observer mission in Syria,” activists said on their Facebook page, “Syrian Revolution.” “We demand access to the international media, we demand the protection of civilians,” they said, calling for fresh demonstrations on Friday, the Muslim day of rest and prayers. Meanwhile, Syria’s underground opposition appealed to the international community on Thursday to send in human rights monitors to help deter military attacks on civilians in an increasingly bloody crackdown on popular unrest, according to Reuters. The Syrian Revolution General Commission, an umbrella bloc of grassroots activists, said a rise in the number of protesters killed of late during the almost six-month-old revolt had won over many reluctant Syrians to the need for outside help. “Calling for outside intervention is a sensitive issue that could be used by the regime to label its opponents as traitors. We are calling for international observers as a first step,” spokesman Ahmad al-Khatib told Reuters. “If the regime refuses it will open the door on itself for other action, such as no-tank or no-fly zones,” he said. Brutal crackdown In the latest military operation, “a force comprising seven armored vehicles and 10 jeeps stormed the village of Ibleen in Jabal al-Zawiyah (region) in search of people wanted by the security services,” the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. “Heavy gunfire was heard as the forces stormed the village,” the Observatory said in a statement received by AFP in Cyprus. The head of the Observatory, Rami Abdel Rahman, later told AFP the three killings occurred during a raid on the house in Ibleen of a brother of one of the defectors, Hussein Harmouche. Two other deserters were arrested, Abdel Rahman said, reached by telephone from Nicosia. Harmouche, an officer, announced his defection in a June video widely distributed on the Internet and broadcast on Arab satellite channels, giving as the reason his refusal “to fire on unarmed civilians.” The United Nations says 2,200 people have been killed, most of them civilians, since democracy protests flared in Syria in mid-March. The assault on Ibleen comes a day after regime forces, according to an updated toll by rights activists, killed another 31 people, 29 of them in a tank-backed raid on the flashpoint central city of Homs. The brutal crackdown on protesters has been widely condemned by world powers, some of which have slapped sanctions on the Damascus regime. “Crimes against humanity” French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe pulled no punches during talks on Wednesday in Moscow with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov. “The Syrian regime has committed crimes against humanity,” Juppe said. But Lavrov gave no signs of being ready to ease a Russian position that last week saw Moscow lash the European Union for imposing a crippling oil embargo on Syria. “We are convinced that the essential thing is to start dialogue at the talks table,” Lavrov said. Russia has staunchly opposed attempts by Western governments to push through a UN Security Council resolution targeting President Bashar al-Assad and has circulated an alternative draft calling for him to implement reforms. The head of the Arab League, Nabil al-Arabi, is due in Damascus on Saturday after a planned visit on Wednesday was postponed. Damascus had postponed the trip at the 11th hour “due to circumstances beyond our control.” Arabi has been commissioned by the 22-member Cairo-based pan-Arab organization to travel to Damascus with a 13-point document outlining proposals to end the bloody crackdown on dissent and push Syria to launch reforms. According to a copy of the document seen by AFP, Arabi is to propose that Assad hold elections in three years, move towards a pluralistic government and immediately halt the crackdown. The initiative, agreed by Arab foreign ministers last month, angered Syria which said it contained “unacceptable and biased language.” Syria’s regime, which has promised to launch a wide range of reforms to appease protesters, blames the unrest on foreign-backed “armed terrorist gangs.” Libya-style reaction Syrian protesters have been chanting slogans calling for international protection but there has been no hint in the West of an appetite for a repeat of NATO air strikes that played a key role in the fall of Libyan strongman Muammar Qaddafi. No country has proposed the kind of intervention in Syria, such as a UN mandate to protect civilians that NATO aircraft have carried out in Libya because of major geo-political risks. Unlike Libya, Syria straddles the fault lines of Middle East conflict; it has powerful allies such as Iran and clout in volatile Lebanon and Iraq. But the West has called on President Assad, whose family and their minority Alawite sect have dominated mainly Sunni Muslim Syria for 41 years, to step down and has imposed increasingly tough punitive sanctions. Yasser Saadeldine, an opposition political commentator based in Qatar, said the success of NATO’s Libya campaign could encourage the West to reconsider its approach to Syria, Reuters reported. “The defeat of Qaddafi has given the West a historic opportunity to mend ties with the Arab and Muslim world.” In a statement, the activists’ bloc said Assad’s forces had killed more than 3,000 civilians in their drive to suppress the demonstrations demanding more political freedoms. It said tens of thousands have been arrested, thousands more displaced from their homes and thousands others counted as missing. It said Syrian authorities had “ignored all laws … using heavy weapons in its pursuit of repression and killings.” This created an urgent need for the international community to “take all necessary steps to protect civilians according to the United Nations charter,” the statement said. “Although we do not seek Arab or international military intervention … we blame the regime for any intervention that could occur because of its intransigence and insistence on carrying out cold-blooded killings.”
