Italian Parliament passes unanimously a resolution on the Syrian crisis
Statement by Fiamma Nirenstein, Vice-president of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the Italian Parliament
“I express my greatest satisfaction for the unanimous approval, today in the Chamber of Deputies, of a bipartisan resolution on the ongoing crackdown in Syria, which I presented as first signatory. This resolution represent also the fulfilling of the commitment we took upon, with many colleagues, with Farid Ghadry, leader of the Reform Party of Syria, we hosted in the Parliament last month.
We are the first European parliament to adopt, on the Syrian crisis, a bipartisan act involving the entire legislative assembly, without political distinctions, binding the government on several issues, from the protection of Syrian citizens to the mobilization at the EU and UN to create an international diplomatic pressure on the Damascus regime.
In my voting declaration, I reasserted that the international community must stand united to defend the human rights of the Syrian population, fighting against a government that has being oppressing it for decades. Moreover, as put down in the resolution, for the sake of peace in the Middle East, it is time to shine a light on the key role of Syrian in the regional dynamics, of its relations with its protégé Hamas and Hezbollah and its strict ties to Iran”.
Here you can read the entire text of the resolution:
Motion to discuss the ongoing crackdown in Syria
The Chamber of Deputies,
Whereas
Since March 15, in the wake of the widespread popular protests called “Arab spring”, Syria too has been shaken by a revolution against the Alawi Regime of Bashar al Assad. It started with a rally of university students and, in a few days, it has turned into a popular movement of enormous proportions. On March 18 2011, a “day of rage” against the regime was proclaimed, which resulted in a bloodshed caused by a violent crackdown of protests by security forces. The first hot spot was Daraa, at the border with Jordan, but the protests quickly spread to Homs, Banias, Latakia, Samnin and Damascus;
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, in three months more than 1,400 civilians have been killed and about 10,000 people have been arrested. More than 10,000 Syrians are fleeing from violence and they are finding refuge in Turkey. Another 5,000 refugees are camped on the Syrian side of the border with Turkey;
In the first few days of the uprisings, President Bashar al Assad stated: “It is only a minor discontent which does not justify a political change”. Three months later, the demand for a political change is growing and the whole Country is by now beset by a true civil war, which is harshly cracked down even with torture and killing of children, as shown in several videos and testified by the victims’ relatives;
The crackdown is led by the infamous Fourth Armored Division under the command of Maher al Assad, brother of the rais Bashar al Assad. This shows that the Assad family – whose founder Hafez had already slaughtered 20,000 dissidents in the city of Hama in 1982 – persists in the path of a bloody repression against dissidents by an ethnic religious minority, which is currently supported by the Iranian regime with very significant resources;
Bashar al Assad has also consistently supported Hamas, the terrorist organization also recognized as such by the European Union in 2004, that has its headquarters in Damascus run by Khaled Mashal. Moreover, Assad has close relations with Hezbollah, a Shiite Islamic extremist organization armed by Iran with the help of Syria, that currently keeps Lebanon in a state of intimidation through a minority government;
The Islamic Republic of Iran is following what is happening in Syria with great attention, by providing support to the forces of the regime to crackdown the revolt in the Country. According to the press and to some witnesses, in the city of Latakia the anti-riot police forces are led by individuals without a uniform who speak Pharsi; in addition other people have been identified as Hezbollah;
On June 5, Palestinian-Syrians have repeatedly tried to march across the border between Syria and Israel and swarm into the Country; according to intelligence sources, the Damascus regime offered 1000 dollars to each protester willing to go to the border to provoke the reaction of Israeli soldiers so as to distract the world’s attention from the massacres perpetrated in Syria against the anti-government protesters;
On June 20, President Assad spoke for the third time since the beginning of the uprising in Syria, accusing the revolution to be “a plot orchestrated abroad and conducted inside our country”;
However, in April, the rais had conceded that “the distance between the government and its people had generated their anger”. And he added that there is the “full and absolute belief in the reform process because it is in the national interest”. “The problem is which reform we want and its content”;
Therefore, even President Assad has clearly recognized that there is more in Syria than a marginal form of dissatisfaction. Indeed fundamental political changes are required;
Last May, the European Union imposed sanctions against 22 members of the Syrian regime who shall be denied an entry visa in the EU member countries and have their assets frozen in Europe;
On June 22, following the agreement reached within the EU to extend the list of sanctions against the Syrian regime to three Iranians accused of providing support to the violent crackdown by the Damascus government, the Syrian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Walid al Muallim, stated “We will delete Europe from our geographical map. From now on we will look East” defining the sanctions “an act of war”;
The very serious risk for Syria is to become a source of extreme instability in the Middle East and for the whole world. Only a correct policy of sanction and condemnation can halt this drift and put an end to the massacre and to the violation of human rights, which has always been perpetrated by the Alawite regime;
Syria has been continuously subjected to a state of national emergency since 1963, which has been used over the years to repress and punish peaceful dissent;
Militants, politicians, human rights advocates, bloggers, members of the Kurdish minority and other people, who have criticized the government or who have attracted the attention on the violations of human rights, have been arbitrarily arrested and often imprisoned for long periods of time; or they have been convicted to prison terms at the end of unfair trials before highly inadequate courts; some of them are conscientious objectors. Former inmates have been forbidden to leave the Country;
According to the 2011 Human Rights Report by Amnesty International, dissidents are tortured and generally mistreated, the judicial system works according to clear political choices, and numerous people are suspiciously dying in custody and sentenced to death. On two occasions, December 18 2008 and December 21 2010, at the United Nations General Assembly, Syria voted against the resolution for a moratorium on death penalties;
There is still no equality for women before the law, in particular in terms of personal status in areas such as marriage, inheritance and criminal convictions. In fact, murder and other violent crimes against women to defend the “honor” of the family are considered as minor crimes, as extenuations;
The population in Syria is mostly Arab-Sunni and there are 74 ethnic and religious groups. Some of them see their rights constantly violated. The Kurds account for 10 per cent of the population and are mainly located in the Northeast of the Country. They are continuously subjected to discriminations; thousands of Kurds are actually stateless and, as a result, do not have an equal access to social and economic rights;
The axis Damascus-Teheran – which became established and integrated from the military point of view during the Iran-Iraq war between 1980 and 1988 – is currently controlled and defended by Pasdaran “advisors”. In fact, the possible fall of Bashar al Assad’s regime would be a lethal blow for the Islamic Republic, which defines the protests in Syria as a “plot of the West”;
Last February, some days after the fall of Mubarak’s regime in Egypt, two Iranian war ships went through the Suez Canal for the first time since the 1979 Islamic revolution and docked at the port of Latakia in Syria. Following their arrival, on March 2, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Bashar al Assad signed a protocol to immediately start the works to transform the Latakia port into a military base for the Iranian Navy, with the possibility to accommodate war ships, submarines and batteries to launch missiles against ships and aircrafts;
The hopes of the international community, first the United States, to engage in dialogue with the present Syrian regime, seem by now unrealistic and unfeasible, as also recently declared by Undersecretary of State Hillary Clinton;
Recently the 15 members of the United Nations Security Council have received an appeal signed by 7 internationally renowned writers such as Bernard-Henri Levy, Amos Oz, David Grossman, Salman Rushdie, Umberto Eco, Orhan Pamuk and Whole Soyinka, calling for a condemnation resolution against the repression in Syria as a crime against humanity;
in this framework, a systematic diplomatic intervention is necessary to concretely tackle the situation in Syria;
Commits the Government to:
Work in order to mount a strong international pressure on the Syrian Government to put an end to any form of violence against its people and to enact political choices to meet their demands;
Extend the sanctions against the Syrian regime so as to obtain a concrete outcry from the international community;
Monitor the international position of Syria in order to prevent it from adopting regional destabilizing actions;
Work to prevent Syria from introducing foreign powers and security forces into its territory to crackdown on its protesters;
Exercise pressures, at European and international level, so that a United Nations mission - already requested from the High Commissioner for Human Rights – is allowed to visit Syria and to evaluate the humanitarian situation in the Country and that the Syrian regime enable the international press to enter the Country;
Exercise its influence within the United Nations to convince the Security Council to discuss the Syrian crisis.
«Nirenstein, Corsini, Polledri, Adornato, Della Vedova, Vernetti, Boniver, Maran, Renato Farina, Lorenzin, D'Antona, Calderisi, Pianetta, Urso, Di Virgilio, Barbieri, Bertolini, Picchi, Cosenza, Gianni, Fiano, Colombo, Sbai».