UN Watch testimony before the UN Human Rights Council, 20th Session,
delivered by UN Watch’s Hillel Neuer, under
Agenda Item 7 “the Human rights situation in Palestine
and other occupied Arab territories.”, July 2, 2012
Thank you, Mr. President.
As this chamber has been discussing human rights and the Middle East, I’ve just learned — this is a dispatch coming out of Agence France Presse from Beirut — that five civilians were killed today in Syria. Four were killed in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor, when their car was shelled. A fifth was killed when troops shelled the rebel-controlled town of Rastan.
And as we sit here, thousands of civilians in Homs remain trapped in shelling. Activist Khaled al-Tellawy reports that, “Many neighborhoods of Homs are still under siege, and it really hard for us to get food or medicines in. Field doctors are amputating the limbs of the injured, because they have no equipment to treat them with, and they can’t be smuggled out.”
This follows the news report over the weekend that Friday became the bloodiest day in the Syrian uprising.
Mr. President,
Why is there no urgent debate for the victims being killed in Syria?
I recall being here in 2004 when the Human Rights Commission convened an emergency meeting over the death of one man, Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.
Why does one terrorist merit an emergency session, but the five innocents killed today, the 190 killed on Friday, the 900 killed last week, merit nothing?
These men, women and children who were just killed in Syria are Arabs, and most of them Muslims. Yet why is it that we just heard speeches by the Arab and Islamic groups speak, and they said nothing for their own brothers and sisters?
Why has this session devoted one entire day against Israel, and then another day for the whole world combined, in violation of the Secretary-General’s appeal for equality in your work?
How can it be that we have heard speeches from Jordan, Tunisia, Libya, Bahrain, Venezuela, Pakistan, UAE, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Sudan, Iran, Malaysia, Indonesia, Lebanon, Bangladesh and Kuwait – yet not one of them could spare a word for those being killed as we speak?
Mr. President,
Why is there a special agenda item targeting Israel, contrary to the Secretary-General’s appeal for the principles of equality and universality, while the world’s worst abusers go ignored, and sit here as judges of others?
Thank you, Mr. President.
