SNC Urges “Prompt Intervention” From Int’l Community

After yesterday’s massacre of some 250 people in the Jabal Zawiyeh region of Idlib, Syria, the Syrian National Council (SNC) issued a press released demanding the “prompt intervention to stop the massacres, which have reached the level of genocide and which coincide with the signing of the Arab League Protocol to send observers into Syria.” Yesterday the Assad Regime’s forces attacked multiple towns with the “use of heavy weapons and artillery in shelling civilian neighborhoods…in the villages of Kansafra, Kafar Awaid, and Mazrain (Idlib), where a large number of residents were killed. Other residents were forced to flee under heavy gunfire.” The SNC is demanding that “safe-zones” and “humanitarian corridors” be set up to provide aid and safety for the Syrian people. Given the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Syria, the Foreign Policy Initiative organized “fifty-seven foreign policy experts and former U.S. government officials [who] signed an open letter today urging President Obama to act more assertively to stop the Assad regime’s continuing atrocities against Syrian civilians.” The letter also calls on President Obama “to lead from the front on Syria.”

Also, the SNC recently completed its first General Assembly meeting in Tunis, Tunisia over the weekend. A statement released by the SNC discussed some of the contents discussed at the meeting, including listing the primary objectives of the revolution the SNC is committed to fulfilling. The SNC highlighted a commitment to minority rights and highlighted the historic discrimination against the Syrian Kurdish community.