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News > World

Syria Accuses UN Human Rights Council Commission of Being a 'Cheap Propaganda Machine'

  • U.S. ambassador Nikki Haley speaking to the United Nations in April, holding photos and levying accusations that Syria was responsible for the chemical weapons released that killed over 80.

    U.S. ambassador Nikki Haley speaking to the United Nations in April, holding photos and levying accusations that Syria was responsible for the chemical weapons released that killed over 80. | Photo: Reuters

Published 9 September 2017
Opinion

Syria said that the government has never used chemical weapons against its people, because to do so would be "a moral crime."

Syria's government has rejected recent renewed allegations by a committee affiliated to the United Nations Human Rights Council that the government of Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons against its own people.

A top Syrian diplomat slammed the commission for being “politicized” and acting as a “cheap propaganda machine” that serves “the agendas of certain states.”

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The Syrian government “never used and will never use toxic gases against its people because it does not possess them in the first place and it considers the use of such gases a moral crime that must be condemned,” the report released by Syrian state-news agency SANA said.

Syria's Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Hussam Ala, sent a letter to the President of the Human Rights Council saying that Syria never used such weapons, and saying that the international organization had deviated from its mandate by serving “impartial sides,” and making accusations with “no tangible basis whatsoever.”

The letter reiterated that Syria terminated its chemical weapons program and destroyed all such weapons it possessed in 2013.

The Syrian ambassador said that the “politicized and selective behavior of the Commission since the beginning and its negative impact on the situation on the ground... prompts the Syrian Arab Republic to disregard all its reports as it has become a cheap propaganda machine serving the agendas of certain states.”

Ala concluded his letter by demanding that the United Nations implement guidelines which would “prevent certain states from exploiting the Human Rights Commission to serve its own political goals”

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“The commission's deviation from its mandate and amateurish way of adopting allegations marketed by sides affiliated with terrorists shows that this commission ignores professional criteria and is completely devoid of professionalism, credibility, and neutrality,” the report by SANA paraphrased Ala as saying.

The commission referred to, the U.N. Commission of Inquiry on Syria, said that a warplane dropped sarin gas on Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib province in April, resulting in the deaths of over 80, reiterating previous claims that the United States made that were used to justify further strikes against Syrian government targets.

The Syrian government, as well as their ally Russia, has denied the accusations repeatedly, saying that an airstrike hit and detonated a weapons depot that belonged to militant groups.

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