Syria Calls UN Death Toll Estimate a “Conspiracy”

Syrian State TV has condemned a ”conspiracy” against the regime of the President Bashar al-Assad, after the UN revised its death toll estimate to 5,000 killed. Bashar Jaafari, Syria’s UN ambassador, said the UN briefing regarding the deaths was part of a “huge conspiracy concocted against Syria” and added that Navi Pillay, the UN human rights chief, was neither objective nor fair. Pillay stated that at least 300 children were among those killed during the unrest and approximately 14,000 rebels were in prison, many tortured, and 12,400 had fled the country. ”Independent, credible and corroborated accounts demonstrate that these abuses have taken place as part of a widespread and systematic attack on civilians,” she told the UN Security Council.

Human Rights Watch spokesman David Mepham said ”It’s time for the UN security council to refer Syria to the ICC so that those who ordered the killing of protesters – and their military and political bosses – can be brought to justice.” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov labeled the position of ”those who refuse to exert pressure on the armed, extremist, part of the [Syrian] opposition and … accuse us of blocking the work of the security council” as immoral. State Department Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland responded, saying “the silence of the Security Council is, frankly, unconscionable in the face of the Asad regime’s violence, and we are again calling on our partners on the Security Council to be willing to take action and speak out for the innocents in Syria who are suffering at the hands of the regime – including Russia.”

Meanwhile, Razan Ghazzawi, a U.S.-born blogger, has been charged with trying to incite sectarian strife. Ghazzawi was arrested on December 4 at the border while on her way to Jordan for a conference on press freedoms. Additionally, activists said that gunmen thought to be army defectors opened fire on a military convoy in central Syria, killing eight soldiers in a retaliatory ambush. Finally, Massoud A. Derhally and Caroline Alexander attribute Assad’s ability to outlast other leaders threatened by the Arab Spring to “stone-hearted detachment.”