Dear Sir,

The world must not forget the plight of  refugees fleeing Syria.
There exists visual evidence of mass graves in the aftermath of the war against the destitute people of these war-torn regions.
It is imperative that the International Criminal Court (ICC) begins to issue warrants of arrest for members of the Syrian regime for crimes against humanity.
According to the ICC, crimes against humanity are: “Waging war without justification. Holding prisoners without giving them due consideration, legal representation, or any rights. Crimes against humanity: murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhumane acts committed against civilian populations, before or during the war, or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the tribunal, whether or not in violation of the domestic law of the country where perpetrated.”
Robert Jackson, the chief US prosecutor at the Nuremberg war crime trials of Nazi leaders, said: “The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating, that civilisation cannot tolerate their being ignored, because it cannot survive their being repeated. If we can cultivate in the world the idea that aggressive war-making is the way to the prisoners dock rather than the way to honours, we will have accomplished something towards making the peace more secure.”
The Syrian government is guilty of genocide against its own people.
The international legal definition of the crime of genocide is found in Articles 11 and 111 of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention of Genocide.
It is often and truthfully said that war exposes the worst side of human nature. But even when warfare comes to an end, man’s inhumanity to man continues, humanity’s war on itself goes on, never ending.
War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong, and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses.
Genocide continues to be an odious scourge on mankind.
The indiscriminate bombings of civilian population centres, including hospitals and schools, amount to a gross violation of the law of armed conflict as set out in the Geneva conventions and is a war crime. But they go on, defying the international will and opinion.
Civil wars are now raging in many countries in the Middle East. It is an example of how democracy so often described as a panacea for the poor in struggling countries, can tear a country apart if politicians do the wrong thing.

Farouk Araie
farouk.araie@telkomsa.net