A report by Human Rights Watch has called on the Arab League to suspend Syria, saying the abuses against civilians in Homs are crimes against humanity. The US-based group's report makes grim reading documenting arbitrary detention, deaths in custody, torture, enforced disappearances, and systematic unlawful killing of civilians in the city of Homs (and elsewhere in Syria) by Syrian Government forces. Homs is the focus for anti-government demonstrations and the effective capital of the revolt against the brutal and repressive Syrian dictatorship. Some forty people were killed there on Thursday.
The UN says at least 3,500 people have been killed in Syria in protests against President Bashar al-Assad. Syria continues to benefit from China and Russia's veto on the UN Security Council, where a resolution which condemned the crackdown in Syria (back in October) was a serious blow to attempts to develop an international consensus on how to grapple with President Bashar al-Assad's brutal regime. Western diplomats tweaked the resolutions wording (which had been proposed by Britain, France, Germany and Portugal, in co-operation with the USA) to try to take account of Chinese and Russian concerns.
The clear diplomatic rebuff to the West, perhaps signals a much stronger stance from Beijing and Moscow who are unhappy to see the weight of the Security Council ranged against the Syrian authorities. This move has only heightened divisions on the Security Council, where Brazil, India, South Africa and Lebanon quietly abstained; this suggests that any idea of a new era of intrusive diplomacy which was brought in by the UN Security Council resolution 1973 on Libya last March is effectively over, perhaps overwhelmed by self-interest.
It's natural for the Peoples Republic of China itself a brutal repressive dictatorship to side with the Syrian Government. Russia has other concerns, spreading democracy not being among them, so an anxiety about a potential lack of future arms sales may be a driving concern. It’s a little odd that some of the states indirectly supporting the Syrian dictatorship have themselves been involved in liberation struggles themselves, perhaps they might well have once had a degree of sympathy for the Syrian people who are laying down their lives for freedom and liberty.
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