Equipo Nizkor - UNSC S/2015/679 - Letter from the Permanent Representative Syria to the UN urging the UNSC to implement its counter-terrorism resolutions.

United Nations
Security Council

S/2015/679

Distr.: General
2 September 2015
English
Original: Arabic

Identical letters dated 1 September 2015 from the Permanent Representative of the Syrian Arab Republic to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-General and the President of the Security Council

The Syrian towns of Fu'ah and Kafraya in Idlib governorate have been under total siege by armed terrorist groups since 28 March 2015. The 30,000 inhabitants face the crime of genocide while the international community, including certain States that are the most vocal about fighting terrorism, stands by in silence.

The armed terrorist groups, which are supported by States that are known to all, have not been content just to besiege those two cities for months and starve the residents to death slowly by preventing the entry of food, drink, medicine and fuel. They have rained down hundreds of rockets daily – on many days more than a thousand – in order to finish off those who have not been killed by hunger and thirst. They are using various types of the rockets for which they have invented such special names as "hell cannon", "gas canister rockets", "elephant rockets" and "dinosaur rockets". The result has been death for many civilians and partial or permanent disability and disfigurement for many others, most of them women, children and the elderly.

These crimes, which are being committed in the two besieged towns by armed terrorist groups, notably the Nusrah Front and Ahrar al-Sham, with logistical support and direct instructions from the Turkish leadership, are just the latest in a series of systematic terrorist crimes to which all components of the Syrian population are being subjected. They constitute war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide under international law. The perpetrators are terrorist groups armed with a destructive obscurantist mindset based solely on branding people as infidels and killing anyone with a different opinion, ideology or creed. The deviant sheikhs of the terrorist takfirist Nusrah Front and Ahrar al-Sham organizations have issued a fatwa that legitimizes the slaughter of all the men in those two cities should they be overrun, with the goal of sowing hatred, fanaticism, extremism and strife in a society that has been distinguished over the course of countless years by its love, harmony and brotherhood.

The Government of the Syrian Arab Republic urges the Security Council immediately to implement its counter-terrorism resolutions, in particular resolutions 2170 (2014), 2178 (2014) and 2199 (2015). In so doing, the Security Council should cooperate and coordinate closely with the Government of the Syrian Arab Republic, which is the principal party bearing the counter-terrorism burden on the ground in Syria. It also urges the Security Council to expose the practices of the States that support and finance the armed terrorist groups, in particular the Governments of Saudi Arabia and Qatar and the Turkish leadership, and take immediate measures to make those States discontinue their support for the Nusrah Front and Ahrar al-Sham organizations and other Al-Qaida-affiliated organizations in Syria. Such action would help to prevent a catastrophe in the towns of Fu'ah and Kafraya.

The time has come to take action instead of remaining silent in the face of the crimes of the terrorist organizations and their backers. The international community should place the blame for the failure of counter-terrorism on the parties that are preventing the Security Council from carrying out its counter-terrorism duties, and on those who support those parties. In particular, the Turkish leadership and its terrorists should be held responsible for any massacre perpetrated against the people of Fu'ah and Kafraya.

I should be grateful if you would have the present letter circulated as a document of the Security Council.

(Signed) Bashar Ja'afari
Permanent Representative of the Syrian Arab Republic
to the United Nations

Information
Bookshop \| Donate Derechos \| Equipo Nizkor

02Sep15

Letter from the Permanent Representative Syria to the UN urging the UNSC to implement its counter-terrorism resolutions

Identical letters dated 1 September 2015 from the Permanent Representative of the Syrian Arab Republic to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-General and the President of the Security Council