Italian Peace Movement Criticizes Report of International Commission on Syria
Marinella Correggia of the Italian “No-War Network – Roma“, criticizes the recent report by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry (CoI), mandated by the UN Human Rights Council for lacking evidence and for being one-sided.
Corregia and the No-War Network – Roma (NWNR) are warning against using the flawed and strongly biased report as a basis for decisions at the meeting of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on 17 September. According to Corregia, the report offers many conclusions but does not contain much evidence to justify them.Corregia and the No-War network are calling for a negotiated solution to the conflict in Syria, beginning with a cease fire. The Syrian people, she states, should have the possibility of expressing themselves on their future, in conditions of peace and without foreign interference.The NWNR points out that such a plan has previously been agreed upon, but that the implementation has been deliberately thwarted by a number of foreign powers who are determined to exacerbate the conflict by supplying even greater amounts of arms and money to those opposition forces who are striving to gain control of the country through violenceIn short, Correggia states, there is a vast gray area surrounding the perpetration of atrocities in Syria that belies the neat, black and white account presented by the Commission.For instance, it is clear that, in a conflict like the one in Syria, that armed groups belonging to the opposition have invaded and taken over largely pro-government neighborhoods, thus making the inhabitants there virtual hostages; it is also conceivable that some of these inhabitants might have paid dearly for their lack of support of the opposition. Nothing of this kind appears in the Commission’s report. Nor do the witnesses interviewed speak of the gruesome acts of intimidation by opposition forces that have surfaced in Western media. Even more glaring is the total absence of any reference to a “third party” in the violence in Syria, for example the death squads that, according to leaked government documents, foreign powers have financed and sent into Syria