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Updated Tuesday, February 7, 2012 12:25 am TWN, The China Post news staff

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A free Syria should punish Beijing, Moscow cowardice

Thirty years to the day that Hafez al-Assad's Syria began a massacre of at least 10,000 people in Hama, another one took place in Homs, and two of the world's biggest countries did nothing to prevent a third.

In Hama, some paid tribute to those who were killed in 1982, throwing red dye into the city's ancient water wheels on the Orontes River, and spray painting “Hafez died, and Hama didn't. Bashar will die, and Hama won't.” Bashar refers to current Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, succinctly described by Christopher Hitchens as “The slobbering dauphin who (the Syrian people) got because he was the son of the slobbering tyrant who came before him.”

Syria is in crisis, but the only real question is when will Bashar al-Assad die, and how? Will it be in exile, or after being tried for crimes against humanity, or will he need to be “put down” like Gadhafi?

The current massacre “is being done in installments and distributed all across Syria,” said an opposition spokesman. “Today, all of Syria is Hama.” And Russia and China are not only letting them get away with it, but by refusing to condemn Syria they are, in the words of the opposition, giving Assad a “license to kill.”

Assad living out the rest of his life in luxury overseas would be a crime and far from just, but his immediate departure to a friendly country could prevent a civil war and save unknown numbers of civilians. Russia and China, however, seem determined to not allow that to happen. On Saturday the two vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution that would have put even more pressure on Assad to resign. Even after the council had watered the wording down to fit other Russian objections, Moscow still found problems with it.

One objection was that the resolution didn't place enough blame for the violence on the opposition or Muslim Brotherhood, despite the fact that the uprising began with, and still comprises, the cold-blooded murder and incarceration of peaceful protesters, something there is no excuse for. The Russians' other problem was that the wording didn't preclude the future use of intervention to remove Assad, even though the resolution had already added language to do just that.

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