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Syrian news fog getting denser
Published: 12 December, 2011, 22:19
Edited: 13 December, 2011, 13:02
Syrians vote to elect their representatives to the Local Administration Councils (LAC) in Damascus on December 12, 2011(AFP Photo / Louai Beshara)
(46.3Mb) embed videoTAGS: Protest, Politics, Mass media, Rory Suchet, Syria
Despite daily amateur video accounts of the Syrian government’s harsh crackdown on the opposition, all most sources are able to say for sure is that there is violence in Syria. Meanwhile, the UN says death toll has already reached 5,000 people.
With most foreign journalists still not allowed into the country, independent reports on Syria remain scarce. However, this could change if the country admits observers from the Arab League – something the Syrian Foreign Ministry declared it would do just a week ago.
But in return for allowing observes into the country, Damascus wants the League to consider any sanctions against it "null and void." The Arab League will convene on Saturday to discuss this and other conditions Syria has proposed regarding the League’s peace plan.
The EU, for its part, has added two Syrian media outlets – the Al Watan newspaper and the website Sham Press – to a list of sanctioned organizations, a move the Russian Foreign Ministry questioned on Monday.
Russia's UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said Western countries were pursuing an incorrect approach toward tackling the Syrian problem, Interfax reports.
"[They] are oriented towards a regime change, hampering dialogue inside Syria, as well as dialogue between Syria and the Arab League," he told Western journalists following the Syria session of the UN Security Council. "It is very dangerous," he added.
And while Dr. Rania Masri, a professor at the University of Balamand in Beirut, is sure that Syria is plunging deeper into violence, a look to further clarify events in the country is hardly possible.
“There are definite questions regarding the credibility of the Syrian Human Rights Observatory, particularly when it comes to the number of victims they allege are victims of government atrocities. What we know, is that it is really hard to find a really credible source: be it Al-Jazeera, the Syrian Human Rights Observatory or the Syrian government itself,” Professor Masri told RT.
Violence in the country continued on Monday, when Syrians made their way to the polls for local elections. Seven were killed when fighting flared up in the northwestern region of Idlib and in the southern province of Daraa, says the UK-based Syrian Human Rights Observatory. The monitor's report also suggest people in Idlib were forced to go to the polls, despite the unrest.
Meanwhile, the UN SC says it is "greatly troubled” by the developments in Syria. The United Nations has estimated the overall death toll from the unrest in Syria at more than 5,000 people.
12.12.2011, 21:29
9 comments
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The killings are commited by rebels who cross over from their base in Turkey. Their was successful local elections with 3,000 candidates in Homs the epicenter of the protests and the western media is not telling anyone about that.
The keep brandishing figures from 'activists' in other to get a UN resolution to move departing US troops from Iraq into another war in Syria and Iran.
The media bias led by Aljazeera which worked in getting the dubious No Fly Zone used by NATO in bombing Libya to stone age is not selling this time since Russia and China used their vetoes to block another 'humanitarian bombing' of killing civilians to protect civilians.
People of Iran have not forgotten shelling of Bushehr in the last century now Britain overtly and rudely announces that it has sent submarines to Persian Gulf and trained its tomahawks to rain fire on Iranian people since they have trumpeting few college chemistry lab as centre of nuclear weapons. Where is UN to send a reminder that Britain at least uses its traditional sly language for threat. It is a good news that Russia brought remarkable enhancement to its military might and political status. But this plan does not end to Yugoslavia and six million people in Libya. It is for billion people in India, China, and Russia. If you listen to private discussions of British and American political elites after their dinner they say Brazil, for instance, is too big for being a country to administer. Russians are looked as the Ottoman empire looked in 1912. They could wake up, like Ottomans, and see that they cannot read letters their fathers are writing for them. They have to bring experts from Cambridge to translate works of Tolstoy and Chekov. That happened to Ottomans. Some one should mention to the UN that it has only blue helmet soldiers and war criminals are actually living near its headquarter in New York.
The death toll isn't a UN estimate; it's an opposition exaggeration to facilitate foreign intervention.
The UN has no idea what the real number is and, instead, reports opposition propaganda as fact.
When does the Russian navy arrive?