Member states to discuss further action against Damascus at Egypt summit after failure of earlier deal to end bloodshed
Martin Chulov in Beirut
guardian.co.uk, Friday 11 November 2011 15.23 GMT
Article history
Syrian demonstrators protest against President Bashar al-Assad, in Deraa. Photograph: Reuters
The Arab League is under mounting pressure to suspend Syria's membership as it meets to discuss the country's steadily worsening eight month crisis.
The league faces calls, from within its ranks and from European countries, to act as its 22 member states meet in Cairo on Saturday after an earlier deal with Damascus failed to achieve an end to the violence in Syria.
That arrangement reached at the start of November, involved Syrian troops and tanks being withdrawn from the cities they are besieging, especially Homs and Hama, along the border with Lebanon and Idlib in the north.
However, violence between regime security forces and opposition groups has not slowed since. In Homs, at least nine people were killed in battles on Friday between security forces and armed opposition groups, including defectors. Another seven people were killed in other parts of Syria.
The Arab League deal was seen as a means of slowing an eight-month revolt that has destabilised the region, fuelled sectarian tensions in Syria and alarmed Europe and the US, which have insisted there will be no repeat of the Nato military intervention that helped topple the former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
The deal's failure has damaged the standing of the pan-Arab body, which has largely remained flat-footed as revolutions rumbled across the Middle East this year.
Nevertheless, Europe and the US believe the league should continue to take centre stage in trying to mediate the crisis, a task that has tested the merits of the 40-year-old body and continues to divide its members.
The director of the Brookings Doha Centre, Salman Shaikh, said key Gulf states remained deeply unhappy with President Bashar al-Assad, but until now had not been ready to take a lead role in urging punitive measures against Syria, including suspension.
"[The Gulf states] can see the opportunity to cut the Tehran line, which stops in Beirut and runs through Damascus, but they're not willing to push for it at this point," he said. "They as well as Europe and the Turks are waiting for the Arab League to give them cover.
"This is a very important moment for the Arab League. The overwhelming majority of Arab people are with the protesters and they want to see some action from this body."
Algeria, Yemen, Lebanon and Sudan remain firmly opposed to any further Arab League action against Syria.
Damascus said on Friday its representative to the league, Yousef Ahmed, had given a letter to the body authorising some of the concessions sought earlier this month.
Human Rights Watch accused the Syrian regime of committing crimes against humanity throughout the uprising, which has killed more than 3,500 civilians and around 1,500 members of the security forces.
The accusation came after the organisation interviewed more than 100 people between April and August who claimed abuses at the hands of the regime.
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Arab League must suspend Syria, says Human Rights Watch
Abuses by Assad regime against civilians in Homs are crimes against humanity, says rights group
Reuters in Beirut
guardian.co.uk, Friday 11 November 2011 08.55 GMT
Article history
Protesters chant anti-Syrian-regime slogans outside the Arab League headquarters in Cairo, Egypt. Photograph: Amr Nabil/AP
Syrian government forces have carried out crimes against humanity as they try to crush opposition to Bashar al-Assad in Homs, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW).
In a report released on Friday, the group urged Arab League delegates meeting on Saturday to suspend Syria from their organisation, ask the UN to impose sanctions on individuals responsible, and refer Syria to the international criminal court.
"The systematic nature of abuses against civilians in Homs by Syrian government forces, including torture and unlawful killings, constitute crimes against humanity," the group said in a statement accompanying the report.
HRW said Syrian security forces had killed at least 104 people in Homs since 2 November, when the Syrian government agreed an Arab League plan aimed at ending the violence and starting a dialogue with Assad's opponents.
Those deaths followed the killing of at least 587 civilians in Homs between April and August, the group said, the highest death toll of any single governorate in the country.
"Homs is a microcosm of the Syrian government's brutality," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at HRW. "The Arab League needs to tell President Assad that violating their agreement has consequences, and that it now supports [UN] security council action to end the carnage."
The UN says 3,500 people have been killed in Assad's crackdown on protests which erupted in mid-March, inspired by popular Arab uprisings which have toppled three north African leaders. Authorities blame armed groups for the violence, saying they have killed 1,100 soldiers and police.
Syria has barred most foreign media, making it difficult to verify accounts of opposition activists or officials.
HRW said it was also refused access to Syria and described the task of obtaining accurate information as "challenging". Its report was based on interviews with 114 Homs residents, who had either fled to neighbouring countries or who spoke via the internet from inside Syria.
It said security forces had conducted large-scale military operations in several towns in the province, including Homs city and the town of Tel Kelakh on the border with Lebanon.
"Typically, security forces used heavy machine guns, including anti-aircraft guns mounted on armoured vehicles, to fire into neighbourhoods to frighten people before entering with armoured personnel carriers and other military vehicles," HRW said.
"They cut off communications and established checkpoints restricting movement in and out of neighbourhoods and the delivery of food and medicine."
Thousands of people in Homs – as in the rest of the country – were subjected to arbitrary arrest, enforced disappearances and systematic torture in detention, the group said. Most were released after several weeks in detention, but several hundred were still missing.
HRW said it had documented 17 deaths in custody in Homs, at least 12 of which were clearly from torture.
"Torture of detainees is rampant," it said, adding it had spoken to 25 former detainees in Homs, all of whom reported being subjected to various forms of torture.
It quoted one man, held at the military intelligence base in Homs, as saying he was beaten with cables and hanged by the hands from a pipe so that his feet did not touch the ground.
"I was hanging there for about six hours, although it was hard to tell the time. They were beating me, and pouring water on me, and then using electric stun guns," he said.
Human Rights Watch said army defections had increased since June and that some residents in Homs had formed "defence committees" armed with guns and even rocket-propelled grenades.
Syria's state media and activists have reported several assassinations in the city over recent weeks of people seen as sympathetic to Assad.
"Violence by protesters or defectors deserves further investigation," HRW said. "However, these incidents by no means justify the disproportionate and systematic use of lethal force against protesters."
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