U.N. Human Rights Commissioner Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein condemned the Syrian government on Tuesday, in a wide-ranging speech cataloguing human rights abuses around the world.
In a speech opening a three-week session of the U.N. Human Rights Council, Zeid said Syria was one of five countries that routinely refused to cooperate with human rights investigators.
“This is a state led by a medical doctor and yet is believed to have gassed its own people; has attacked hospitals and bombed civilian neighborhoods with indiscriminate explosive weapons; and maintains tens of thousands of detainees in inhuman conditions,” Zeid said.
“Words cannot convey how profoundly I condemn this situation.”
The other countries are Belarus, Eritrea, North Korea, and Iran, but Israel also had a long record of refusing cooperation in terms of access to occupied Palestinian territory, he added.
Venezuela had comprehensively denied access to Zeid’s staff, refusing his regional representative a visa for the past two and a half years, he said.
“States may shut my office out – but they will not shut us up; neither will they blind us. If access is refused us, we will assume the worst, and yet do our utmost to nonetheless report as accurately as we can on serious allegations.”
The council, based in Geneva, is made up of 47 countries and aims to protect human rights around the world. It can mandate investigations into suspected abuses.

Source: Reuters, 14 Sep. 2015