China, Russia Block Security Council Vote on Syria

Western and Arab League countries condemned Russia and China for vetoing a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down after 10-months of suppressing dissent in the country.

Following Saturday’s Security Council vote, American ambassador to the U.N. Susan E. Rice, said the U.S. was “disgusted that a couple of members” have persisted in preventing the Council from “addressing an ever-deepening crisis in Syria and a growing threat to regional peace and security,” according to a transcript.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon on Saturday said the Council missed a chance to protect Syrian civilians against regime-mandated violence. “This is a great disappointment to the people of Syria and the Middle East, and to all supporters of democracy and human rights,” his spokesperson said in a statement.

The Syrian National Council, which is based in Turkey and is the largest opposition group, said both China and Russia are now complicit in the acts of violence carried out by al-Assad’s forces.

“Moscow and Beijing, in obstructing the [Security Council] draft resolution” are now “responsible for the escalation of killings and genocide” in Syria, reads a statement from the group.

Russia responded by defending the decision. The country’s representative to the U.N. Vitaly Churkin said that the resolution was unsuitable because it proposed a “regime change.” China also followed suit. This was the second time in four months that Russia and China blocked a Security Council resolution.

However, as U.N. General Assembly President Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser from Qatar said, the longer the council waits to decide on Syria and “remains divided,” the situation will become increasingly difficult to mitigate because Syrians are “being killed daily.”

Turkey, which is not a member of the Security Council but borders much of Syria, expressed its disappointment with the veto. Foreign Russia and China failed in their “primary responsibility” to “protect international peace and security,” Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said in a statement.

The 13 other Security Council members, including three other permanent members, the United States, France, and Germany, voted in favor of the resolution, which was backed by the Arab League. The plan called for a democratic transition, dialogue between opposition groups and the government, the end to violence in the country, and the withdrawal of troops and vehicles from the streets.

Despite the Arab League’s sending a team of observers to monitor and report on the situation, the conflict in Syria has escalated in recent days with groups of army defectors launching increasingly brazen attacks on state security forces. A week ago, the defectors were able to take over much of the suburbs of Damascus, the capital, before being driven out by the Syrian army.

The U.N. estimates more than 5,400 people have been killed in the violence, although human rights activists say the figure is much higher. The Syrian government said that around 2,000 of its security forces have been killed, frequently blaming the violence on “terrorist gangs” backed by foreign governments.

The Security Council vote came as activists said that more than 200 people were killed across the country by Syrian forces in a single day, making it one of the bloodiest days since the uprising began last March. Around 181 were killed in the restive city of Homs, where there were reports the army firing artillery and mortars at neighborhoods.

The Local Coordination Committees activist group, which reported the deaths, called on Syrians to strike for two days following the Security Council veto. “In the past few days, Assad’s regime was shelling several residential neighborhoods to add more crimes to its teeming record of massacres against this great nation,” it said in a statement.