HRW slams Syria after protester deaths

Human Rights Watch yesterday condemned Syria’s “deliberate policy” of dispersing protesters with deadly force after activists said security forces killed at least 15 people in the latest protests.

The deaths came last Friday as Damascus accused the US envoy to Syria of inciting violence in the city of Hama, where activists said nearly half a million people took part in a demonstration.

Washington roundly denied the charge and accused the Syrian embassy in Washington of spying on demonstrators in the US.

Opposition activists reported five deaths last Friday in the central city of Homs, two in the capital’s commercial neighbourhood Medan, six in the Dmeir area, east of Damascus, and two in the Maaret al-Numan area of the northwest.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said security forces also arrested more than 200 people nationwide on Friday, more than half of them in Homs.

Rights groups say security forces have killed more than 1,300 civilians and arrested at least 12,000 since anti-government protests erupted in mid-March.

New York-based Human Rights Watch issued a damning criticism of Syrian security forces for firing on unarmed civilians and for beating detainees, based on testimony from alleged defectors.

“All of the interviewed defectors told Human Rights Watch that their superiors had told them that they were fighting infiltrators (mundaseen), salafists (Muslim fundamentalist radicals) and terrorists,” HRW said in a statement.

“The defectors said they were surprised to encounter unarmed protesters instead, but still were ordered to fire on them in a number of instances. The defectors also reported that those who refused orders to shoot on protesters ran the risk of being shot themselves.”

One defector spoke of an incident in Homs, where “protesters had sat down in the square.”

“We got an order... to shoot at the protesters. We were shooting for more than half an hour. There were dozens and dozens of people killed and wounded.

“Thirty minutes later, earth diggers and fire trucks arrived. The diggers lifted the bodies and put them in a truck. I don’t know where they took them.”

The London-based Syrian Observatory’s director Rami Abdel Rahman said 450,000 Syrians rallied after last Friday prayers in Hama, an opposition bastion, under the banner ‘No to dialogue’ with Assad’s regime and called for its ouster.