RT: Mother Agnes, sorry to interrupt you – but in the beginning of the interview you said that you’d been investigating cases of human rights abuse both by the government and the opposition. Could you please give us some detail? M A: Yes, sure. There is a report that has recently been filed to the General Assembly. It is to be discussed shortly. The Human Rights Violations Investigation Commission keeps failing to get into Syria, claiming that they can’t get a permit from the Syrian authorities. That’s why they cannot collect first-hand reports of all the witnesses. Back in March we cooperated with this commission, as well as the UN Human Rights Commission headed by Navanethem Pillay, and the commissioner herself said she wants to hold an investigation of her own. We met in Lebanon and talked on the phone as well, and members of the two commissions ended up asking us to find witnesses for them. That proved a major challenge. People are too scared to share any information because they think the militants might plot revenge on them. When we did eventually find the people who agreed to testify, our report got a much more complete look. Our previous report, for example, was about 60 percent more informative. Unfortunately, it was compiled at the time when many experts of the commissions were away on summer holidays. This is why we were unable to deliver the testimonies in due time. And that’s exactly when the killing spree near Latakia happened. There are over 400 people on my list of the dead. These people were brutally murdered – but the world media have been reluctant to talk about that for some reason. They never even tried to interview the survivors or the families of the victims. Their excuse for such reluctance is that they believe those people who died near Latakia were killed in hostilities rather than a well-planned raid by the militants who specifically targeted civilians.
Posted on: Thu, 26 Sep 2013 23:04:52 +0000