Syrian opp.: Assad regime and Iran stoking sectarianism in the region

Hijab says Assad regime has evaded from discussing political transition during UN-mandated talks in Geneva

ANKARA- UN-brokered talks at resolving the six-year conflict in Syria have reached a dead end due to refusal of the Syrian regime to discuss political transition in the country, an opposition negotiator said.
Speaking to Anadolu Agency, Riad Hijab said that the Bashar al-Assad regime has evaded from discussing political transition during recent UN-mandated talks in Geneva.
“With every round of negotiations, the regime begins to escalate its bombardment and commit massacres against the [Syrian] people,” said Hijab, the coordinator of the High Committee of the Syrian opposition in negotiations.
Hijab said that the Syrian opposition has suspended its participation in the UN talks due to massacres committed by the regime against Syrian civilians.
“Any return to the negotiations would require creating a favorable climate, which currently does not exist,” he said.
“The Syrian people are still suffering,” he said, citing a recent escalation in attacks by the Assad regime.
“We have seen an unprecedented escalation by the regime and its allies Iran and Russia against the Syrian people, using banned weapons as phosphor and napalm bombs,” he said.
Syria has been locked in a vicious civil war since 2011, when the Assad regime cracked down on pro-democracy protests with unexpected ferocity.
Since then, more than a quarter of a million people have been killed and more than 10 million displaced across the war-battered country, according to the UN.
UN-mandated talks between the Syrian regime and opposition to look into ways of resolving the six-year conflict collapsed in late April.
UN envoy Staffan de Mistura said on Thursday that the international body will not hold another round of Syrian talks until both sides agree the parameters for a political transition deal, which has an August 1 deadline.
'I have informed the Security Council just a few days ago ... The time is not yet mature for the official third round of the intra-Syrian talks,' de Mistura said.
Hijab further accused the Assad regime and allied Iran of stoking sectarianism in the region.
He also criticized attempts by Russia – which began airstrikes against Assad’s opponents in September -- to designate the opposition Jaish al-Islam and Ahrar al-Sham groups as “terrorist” organizations.
“The two groups are defending the rights of the Syrian people and are working to remove the regime,” he said, going on to call on the international community to “show a real resolve to guarantee political transition” in Syria.
Source: Anadolu Agency, 13 June 2016

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Condemns migrant detention in Europe

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Raad Al Hussein

GENEVA- The UN's human rights chief voiced alarm Monday at the increasing detention of migrants in Europe, including unaccompanied children, amid widespread anti-migrant rhetoric across the continent.
As Europe faces its biggest migration crisis since the aftermath of World War II, UN rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein said he had sent staff members to assess areas along the main migration routes in the central Mediterranean and Balkans.
'They have observed a worrying increase in detention of migrants in Europe, including in the hotspots, (which are) essentially vast mandatory confinement areas which have been set up in Greece and Italy,' he told the opening of the UN Human Rights Council's second annual session.
'Even unaccompanied children are frequently placed in prison cells or centers ringed with barbed-wire,' he said, insisting 'detention is never in the best interests of the child.'
Zeid urged the EU to collect data on migrant detentions by member states, warning that 'the figures would, I fear, be very shocking.'
More than one million people made the journey to Europe in 2015, the majority fleeing war in Syria and the Middle East, and a further 208,000 have come since January, according to UN figures.
More than 2,850 people have died trying to cross the Mediterranean so far this year.
Faced with the influx, the UN rights chief warned that many countries were showing 'a strong trend that overturns international commitments, refuses basic humanity, and slams doors in the face of human beings in need.'
He pointed out that EU countries so far have managed to relocate fewer than one percent of the 160,000 people they have committed to taking from overwhelmed Greece and Italy.
He urged European countries to 'find a way to address the current migration crisis consistently and in a manner that respects the rights of the people concerned,' and to 'remove hysteria and panic from the equation.'
This, he said, was particularly important in the context of a deal between the European Union (EU) and Turkey in March, under which migrants not entitled to asylum are to be deported from Greece back across the Aegean.
Zeid also decried 'the widespread anti-migrant rhetoric that we have heard, spanning the length and breadth of the European continent.'
'This fosters a climate of divisiveness, xenophobia and even, as in Bulgaria, vigilante violence,' he said.
Before they reach Europe, many migrants are meanwhile suffering horrible human rights abuses in chaos-wracked Libya, the UN rights warned.
He decried 'disturbing reports of many migrants in Libya being subjected to prolonged arbitrary detention, attacks and unlawful killings, torture and other ill-treatment, sexual violence and abduction for ransom.'
UN staff visiting a migrant detention center in the country found 'dozens of people crammed into storage rooms without space to lie down.'
He urged EU countries attempting to cooperate with Libya on migration and border management to only do so 'in full respect for the human rights of the people involved.'

Syrian Regime Air Strikes On Aleppo kill 14 Civilians

 

More than Twenty civilians were killed in government strikes on eastern parts of Aleppo

ALEPPO - Air strikes on rebel-held neighborhoods in Syria’s second city Aleppo on Friday killed at least 14 civilians and wounded more than a dozen others, the local civil defense told AFP.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said regime warplanes carried out the air strikes and gave a toll of 10 dead.
An AFP correspondent in the opposition-held eastern part said several neighborhoods were targeted and that the wail of ambulances could be heard throughout the morning.
A fragile ceasefire in Syria is in grave peril without urgent action, the UN top envoy to the war-ravaged country warned Friday, as violence surged on the ground.
In Bustan AL-Qasr, one of the most heavily-populated neighborhoods, a strike hit a five-story apartment building, shearing off part of an entire floor.
Civil defense volunteers were climbing into the building to search for families trapped in the rubble, according to the AFP journalist.
Seven civilians were killed and 10 wounded there, a civil defense member said.
Two other people were killed and eight wounded in Al-Mashhad district, the source said.
And in the opposition-held Salhin neighborhood, a strike killed five civilians, he added.
The Britain-based Observatory said the air strikes targeted Bustan al-Qasr and other Aleppo neighborhoods, killing at least 10 people and wounding dozens more.
'The number of martyrs is expected to rise because many of those wounded are in critical condition,' said the monitor, which relies on a network of sources inside Syria for its reports.
Syria truce ’in great trouble’
The truce 'is still in effect, but it is in great trouble if we don’t act quickly,' Staffan de Mistura told reporters, adding that peace talks in Geneva would continue through Wednesday. The truce 'is still in effect, but it is in great trouble if we don’t act quickly,' Staffan de Mistura told reporters, adding that peace talks in Geneva would continue through Wednesday.
Once Syria’s commercial hub, Aleppo has been divided between rebel control in the east and government forces in the west since 2012.
Nearly all warring parties in Syria -- the regime, rebels, jihadists, and Kurds -- have carved out zones of control in war-torn Aleppo province.
A ceasefire took effect in Syria at the end of February but the country has been rocked by fighting in recent weeks, particularly around Aleppo.
Syria’s conflict erupted in March 20 11 with anti-government protests, but has since spiralled into a multi-front war that has left more than 270,000 people dead.