Syria expelled from Arab League: Die Bashar

Syria’s formal suspension is to start in four days, offering what senior Arab League officials described as a last chance for Mr. Assad to carry out a peace agreement it said it had accepted. The plan called for the Syrian government to halt the violence directed toward civilians, to withdraw all its security forces from civilian areas and to release tens of thousands of political prisoners. Your link

I'm sorry to hear of trouble in Syria. Seems they kill anybody who disagrees with their decisions, and the Arab League has voted to suspend them over further crackdowns on Arab Spring demonstrations.

Think it will work, rhodescholar?

I'm sorry to hear of trouble in Syria. Seems they kill anybody who disagrees with their decisions, and the Arab League has voted to suspend them over further crackdowns on Arab Spring demonstrations.

Think it will work, rhodescholar?

In an interview with French television, Rifaat al-Assad said months of civil unrest had effectively deprived Syria of leadership and it now risked being torn apart by armed militias and could face a worse upheaval than neighboring Lebanon’s civil war in the 1970s and 1980s. Out of a sense of patriotism, Bashar al-Assad should speed up his departure, he said, but his presence in Syria was not untenable, as blood had been shed on both sides, among supporters and opponents of the government. “He has to go, but without leaving the country. He isn’t responsible; it’s a historical accumulation of many things and I’d like him to convince himself to step down,” Rifaat al-Assad told LCI television.

Rifaat al-Assad is a former military commander, widely held responsible for crushing an Islamist uprising in 1982 against then president Hafez al-Assad, Bashar’s father, in which thousands were killed. Rifaat turned against the government in the 1980s and now lives in exile. Earlier this year, his son and Bashar’s cousin, Ribal, who lives in exile in London, urged the Syrian leader to attempt a rapprochement with opponents to avoid civil war. On Thursday, Ribal told BBC radio the Syrian government just wanted to cling to power. He called for the opposition to be united, to include all the country’s different ethnic groups, sects and religions, as part of a process towards a peaceful transition. This could allow his cousin to “get out, if somebody could give him refuge,” he said. “I have been talking to people in the military and in the military secret service lately in Syria who also are tired and are against what is happening,” he said.

Meanwhile, in Syria, government troops shelled two northern villages overnight after an attack by army defectors on forces loyal to Bashar al-Assad, local activists said yesterday, in the first reported use of sustained shelling against the eight-month uprising. The assault came a day after the Arab League suspended Syria and gave it until the end of the week to comply with an Arab peace plan to end a crackdown on the revolt that has killed more than 3,500 people, by a UN count. Eight villagers were injured overnight when tank shells and heavy mortars fell for three hours on Tal Minnij and Maarshamsheh and surrounding farmland, the activists said. It was not possible to confirm the shelling independently. Syria has barred most foreign media since unrest began. Army defectors earlier had attacked a building housing security forces near army depots in the Wadi al-Deif area on the edge of the town of Maarat al-Numaan, 290km north of Damascus, activists said.

Bashar al-Assad?s uncle calls for him to step down - Taipei Times

The results of the inquiry, released on Monday, added to mounting international pressure on President Bashar Assad, a day after the Arab League approved sweeping sanctions to push his embattled regime to end the violence. Syria's foreign minister called the Arab move "a declaration of economic war" and warned of retaliation. The report by a U.N. Human Rights Council panel found that at least 256 children were killed by government forces between mid-March and early November, some of them tortured to death. "Torture was applied equally to adults and children," said the assessment, released in Geneva. "Numerous testimonies indicated that boys were subjected to sexual torture in places of detention in front of adult men."

The U.N. defines a child as anyone under the age of 18. The report was compiled by a panel of independent experts who were not allowed into Syria. However, the commission interviewed 223 victims and witnesses, including defectors from Syria's military and security forces. The panel said government forces were given "shoot to kill" orders to crush demonstrations. Some troops "shot indiscriminately at unarmed protesters," while snipers targeted others in the upper body or head, it said. It quoted one former soldier who said he decided to defect after witnessing an officer shoot a 2-year-old girl in Latakia, then claim he killed her so she wouldn't grow up to be a demonstrator.

The list of alleged crimes committed by Syrian forces "include murder, torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence," said the panel's chairman, Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, a Brazilian professor. "We have a very solid body of evidence." At least 3,500 people have been killed since March in Syria, according to the U.N. - the bloodiest regime response against the Arab Spring protests sweeping the Middle East. Deaths in Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen have numbered in the hundreds; while Libya's toll is unknown and likely higher, the conflict there differs from Syria's because it descended into outright civil war between two armed sides. The U.N. investigation is the latest in a growing wave of international measures pressuring Damascus to end its crackdown, and comes on the heels of sweeping sanctions approved Sunday by the Arab League.

Syrian officials did not comment directly on the U.N. findings. However, the regime reacted sharply to the Arab sanctions, betraying a deep concern over the economic impact and warning that Syria could strike back. Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem called the Arab League action "a declaration of economic war" and said Syria had withdrawn 95 percent of its assets in Arab countries. Economy Minister Mohammed Nidal al-Shaar said "sources of foreign currency would be affected" by the sanctions, reflecting concerns that Arab investment in Syria will fall off and transfers from Syrians living in other Arab countries will drop.

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