Dr. Khalid Al-Shafi
The international initiative known as “Responsibility to Protection” or R2P, which was launched in 2005, stipulates that when states fail to protect their citizens from genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes or crimes against humanity, the responsibility for protecting these citizens falls on the international community.
But this initiative has been merely ink on paper, especially in the case of underdeveloped Third World countries and Arab countries, on top of them Syria.
We need to put aside the argument put forward in defence of the election held by the Syrian regime — an argument that said the election boosted the legitimacy of the Syrian regime. We also need to discard the view — held by Russia, Iran, Iraq, sections of the Lebanese society and some lovers of dictatorships and sympathisers of regimes in the Arab world — that the election was a means to solving internal problems in Syria.
Frankly speaking, the Syrian presidential election was illegitimate, unethical and inhuman for a number of reasons, including the reasons mentioned by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. On top of these reasons is the fact that it was difficult for the regime to conduct the elections in more than 90 percent of Syrian territory because of frequent shelling and clashes. There are a large number of internally displaced people (around 6.5 million) and around 3.8 million Syrians living outside the war-ravaged country as refugees in neighbouring countries.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights raised questions about the legitimacy of the Syrian presidential election while the regime had more than 215,000 people in jails, including 85,000 forcibly disappeared. The Observatory said more than 4,571 prisoners, including 92 children and 31 women had died from torture in prisons. It added that it had documented the cases of all these people.
The Observatory said that more than 7,500 women were subjected to sexual assaults, while more than 108,527 Syrians had been killed during three years of fighting in the country, including 14,825 children and 13,293 women.
This means that four civilians were killed every hour at the hands of the Syrian regime, bringing the number of Syrians killed to 96
every day.
The regime is still practicing cleansing, because the number of chemical attacks has reached more than 52, Scud missiles and barrels of explosives have been used against civilians 5,827 times so far. These barrels have killed tens of thousands of Syrians. Schools, hospitals, mosques and residential areas have been totally destroyed.
In politics, dictatorships might win a battle by deception and fabrication, but surely they will not win the war. The bloodshed by the Syrian regime can never be covered by putting papers into ballot boxes.
The international initiative known as “Responsibility to Protection” or R2P, which was launched in 2005, stipulates that when states fail to protect their citizens from genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes or crimes against humanity, the responsibility for protecting these citizens falls on the international community.
But this initiative has been merely ink on paper, especially in the case of underdeveloped Third World countries and Arab countries, on top of them Syria.
We need to put aside the argument put forward in defence of the election held by the Syrian regime — an argument that said the election boosted the legitimacy of the Syrian regime. We also need to discard the view — held by Russia, Iran, Iraq, sections of the Lebanese society and some lovers of dictatorships and sympathisers of regimes in the Arab world — that the election was a means to solving internal problems in Syria.
Frankly speaking, the Syrian presidential election was illegitimate, unethical and inhuman for a number of reasons, including the reasons mentioned by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. On top of these reasons is the fact that it was difficult for the regime to conduct the elections in more than 90 percent of Syrian territory because of frequent shelling and clashes. There are a large number of internally displaced people (around 6.5 million) and around 3.8 million Syrians living outside the war-ravaged country as refugees in neighbouring countries.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights raised questions about the legitimacy of the Syrian presidential election while the regime had more than 215,000 people in jails, including 85,000 forcibly disappeared. The Observatory said more than 4,571 prisoners, including 92 children and 31 women had died from torture in prisons. It added that it had documented the cases of all these people.
The Observatory said that more than 7,500 women were subjected to sexual assaults, while more than 108,527 Syrians had been killed during three years of fighting in the country, including 14,825 children and 13,293 women.
This means that four civilians were killed every hour at the hands of the Syrian regime, bringing the number of Syrians killed to 96
every day.
The regime is still practicing cleansing, because the number of chemical attacks has reached more than 52, Scud missiles and barrels of explosives have been used against civilians 5,827 times so far. These barrels have killed tens of thousands of Syrians. Schools, hospitals, mosques and residential areas have been totally destroyed.
In politics, dictatorships might win a battle by deception and fabrication, but surely they will not win the war. The bloodshed by the Syrian regime can never be covered by putting papers into ballot boxes.
