UN Photo
“Today, in a sense the entire country has become a torture-chamber: a place of savage horror and absolute injustice,” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein told a high-level panel discussion at the Human Rights Council on the situation of human rights in Syria.
The entire conflict is “this immense tidal wave of bloodshed and atrocity,” Mr. Zeid said.
The High Commissioner said that he had recently met with a group of Syrian women whose relatives had been detained or are simply missing. Their relatives are among the “countless people” in Syria to suffer arbitrary detention, torture, kidnapping, and enforced disappearance.
The Office of the High Commissioner (OHCHR) has been refused access to the country, and no international human rights observers are admitted to check on sites where “very probably tens of thousands of people are currently held,” Mr. Zeid said.
Despite a limited access, OHCHR is working alongside the Commission of Inquiry to collect and analyze evidence, building up the basis for criminal proceedings against individual perpetrators.
In his statement, Mr. Zeid noted that the conflict started with torture which spawned “rebel movements, fueling violent extremists and setting the stage for a regional and proxy war.”
Nearly 6.3 million people have been displaced and an additional 4.9 million people – mostly women and children – were forced to seek refuge since 2011, according to UN figures.
His comments come as the conflict in Syria is entering its seventh years, triggered on 15 and 16 March, 2011, when authorities clamped down on demonstrations in Damascus, setting off massive anti-Government protests.
Mr. Zeid called also for “ensuring accountability, establishing the truth and providing reparations,” if Syrians are ever to find peace and reconciliation.
“worst man made disaster since ww2”
what utter garbage.
– since 211 the syrian civil war has claimed some 400000 casualties
– about double that was MURDERED in rwanda IN 3 MONTHS
– over five million dead and STILL counting in the perpetual congolese civil war that noone has ever heard about
and if we go back to the 20th century we got vietnam and korea that reaped millions each, not to mention the cultural revolution in china which is believed to have killed some 30 million people, no war required.
syria is just another case of arabs doing what arabs naturally do. it is the most over-reported conflict after the israel-palestina skirmishes. worst man made disaster since ww2? this is a pathetic lie to guilt trip westerners into letting millions of arab opportunists turning western countries into just the kind of middle eastern paradises that they are migrating from.
just write your senator and tell him ‘no’.
Thanks to Obama and Clinton.
Seriously?
I burnt my toast the other morning & it was still Obama’s fault.
Open you eyes and read up on the history of the Syrian conflict.
I am drawing a Red Line and don’t you dare cross it. Said the coward who used to be President.
U.N. enabled Ohitler to draw red lines in the sand, along with the fake news praising it . What a bunch of creeps . They were losers before they were losers . And now they really do not care , never have never will .
And, just what has the worthless U.N. done to stop it?