FCO Minister condemns Syrian regime’s siege and starvation tactics
9 May 2014 11:27 AM
Hugh Robertson condemns
continued attempts to starve Syrian people into submission and calls for
Security Council action.
Responding to reports that the
remaining people had been evacuated from Old Homs, Minister for the Middle East
Hugh Robertson said:
The recent evacuation of the
remaining 2,000 people from Old Homs should not obscure the siege and
starvation tactics the regime systematically enforced upon the innocent people
of Homs for two years. Elsewhere in Syria, there remain over 200,000 people the
regime is trying to starve into submission, and whom the regime continues to
target with indiscriminate attacks, including through the horrific use of
barrel bombs.
We remain extremely concerned
about the fate of the men and boys seized by the regime after an earlier UN
supervised evacuation from Old Homs. As the UN High Commissioner for Human
Rights Navi Pillay has said, the regime has systematically used torture and
ill-treatment against individuals in government facilities.
The UN Security Council has
demanded, through resolution 2139, that the regime immediately lift the sieges
across Syria and provide humanitarian agencies free and unfettered access. But
as Valerie Amos, UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, reported to the Security
Council on 30 April, the regime is continuing to ignore these demands. This
cannot be allowed to continue, and the case for the UN Security Council to take
further action is compelling.
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