The Assad regime will be elected to a senior post on a United Nations committee in charge of upholding fundamental human rights in opposing the “subjugation, domination and exploitation” of peoples, UN Watch reported from Geneva.
The UN Special Committee on Decolonization was established in 1961 and is exclusively devoted to the issue of decolonization. The Committee holds its main session in New York in June, as well as an annual seminar in the Caribbean and Pacific in alternate years. In 2018, the seminar was held in St. George’s, Grenada.
At each main session, the Committee reviews the list of territories to which the UN Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples is applicable and makes recommendations on its implementation and the dissemination of public information on decolonization to the local population. It also hears statements from Non-Self-Governing Territories (NSGTs), dispatches missions to these NSGTs, and organizes seminars on the political, social, and economic situation in the NSGTs.
The 24-nation forum, where Cuba also holds a major role, seeks to “decolonize” Gibraltar, the Falkland Islands, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, and a dozen other territories.
Here’s a fun fact: the announcement of Syria’s promotion to the post of liberating the colonized people of the world (the vast majority of whom would rather stay colonized, thank you very much), was made on February 18, the same day that a UN commission of inquiry accused Syria of “crimes against humanity, war crimes, and other international crimes including genocide.”
I know some of you don’t believe me, so here’s the U.N. video. pic.twitter.com/PvtMpOZLIH
— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer)
In a 20-page report released Feb. 18, the Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic recalls the most heinous of violations of international humanitarian and human rights law perpetrated against the civilian population in Syria since March 2011, concluding that “such acts are likely to constitute crimes against humanity, war crimes and other international crimes, including genocide.”
Where is Fatou Bensouda when you need one?
“Parties to this conflict, have benefited from the selective intervention and woeful negligence of the international community, that has left no Syrian family unscathed,” said Commission Chair Paulo Pinheiro. “The children, women, and men of Syria have paid the price as a brutal authoritarian government unleashed overwhelming violence to quell dissent. Opportunistic foreign funding, arms, and other support to the warring parties poured fuel on this fire that the world has been content to watch burn”, he continued. “It is far past time to finally put Syrians first – and expend every effort to support a peaceful, negotiated resolution to the conflict and to help place Syria on a path toward a stable, prosperous, and just future for all her people”, he concluded.
Meanwhile, according to UN Watch, Assad’s newly appointed UN envoy, Ambassador Bassam al-Sabbagh, will be appointed to the post of Rapporteur on behalf of the Decolonization Committee. Its chairperson, Grenada’s UN ambassador Keisha McGuire, announced that “the Special Committee will take up, at a later date, the election of the Special Rapporteur of the Committee pending the arrival in New York of His Excellency Ambassador Bassam al-Sabbagh, nominated by the Syrian Arab Republic.”
The Syrian delegate at the meeting clarified that the election of Ambassador al-Sabbagh would come during the June session, saying, “We had hoped he would be among us today. But for reasons beyond our control, he was unable to join us today. We thank the Committee for having deferred the election until the month of June.”
Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, called the committee’s announcement “morally repulsive and logically absurd.”
“Putting Syria on top UN committees only helps the Assad regime portray itself a UN arbiter of human rights. It’s an insult to Syria’s millions of victims,” Neuer said. “Morally, Mr. Guterres should do the right thing and at the very least condemn Syria’s candidacy.”
Or condemn Israel for something, it’s been a few days already without a juicy attack on the Jewish State.