Malta calls for stop to Syria violence

The Maltese government has joined the international community in expressing grave preoccupation at the widespread violations of human rights and use of force with which the Syrian authorities are confronting civilian protestors seeking democratic change in their country.

In a statement, Foreign Minister Tonio Borg today called on the Syrian authorities to take all necessary steps to stop violence, meet the legitimate aspirations of the Syrian people and allow for the introduction of genuine reforms.

“Malta remains supportive of the EU’s calls for fundamental freedoms to be granted to the Syrian people as well as of its efforts to bring the crisis in Syria to a peaceful end.”

Alternattiva Demokratika’s spokesperson for EU and international affairs, Prof. Arnold Cassola, said the Maltese government had to make its voice clearly heard in the human rights debate in the United Nations Security Council on Thursday.

“The world has been witnessing Assad’s brutality for far too long now in perfect impotence. The international community has been a mute spectator to this unheard violence and this state of affairs can no longer persist.

“The Maltese government has to make its voice clearly heard so that UN mandated peace enforcement forces are deployed in Syria to protect the innocent civilians, the victims of the Assad regime,” Cassola said.

AD chairperson Michael Brigulgio reiterated the Green party’s to democratic forces of opposition in Syria and in other countries characterised by brutal dictatorships. “The European Union should not give its support to such Governments,” Briguglio said.

United Nations officials said Tuesday that as many as 10,000 residents of a Palestinian refugee neighborhood in the Syrian port city of Latakia had fled during a four-day assault that has killed 35 people, as security forces carried out what residents said was a government attempt to rebuild a wall of fear in one of Syria’s largest cities.

Latakia, on the country's Mediterranean coast, is the third locale to bear the full brunt of military and security forces this month, although the government has also persisted in its crackdown on the suburbs of Damascus and Homs, the third-largest city.

The violence this month has provoked international condemnations that have grown sharper, but still stopped short of demanding President Bashar Assad step down.

On Tuesday in Washington, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said it was more effective to forge international consensus against Assad - as well as intensify economic pressure through sanctions – than for the United States alone to lead the way.

The UN Relief and Works Agency, which assists Palestinian refugees, said it had no information on the whereabouts of the Latakia Palestinians. Activists have said many of the displaced have left for the countryside or Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city.

“A forgotten population has now become a disappeared population,” said Christopher Gunness, a spokesman for the agency.