HANDS OFF CAIN PROTESTS PRESIDENT ASSAD’S VISIT TO ROME MAYOR

Hands Off Cain, the Italian Radicals, the Greens and member of Jewish associations spoke with one voice in Piazza San Marco, a few yards away from the Rome City Council at the Campidoglio, as Mayor Walter Veltroni received Syrian President Bashar Assad.
“Stop the death penalty in Syria”, “UN moratorium on executions”, “Human Rights in Syria” read the banners displayed that the protesters, about 50, placed in full view of the presidential convoy as it arrived at the Campidoglio.
United in protest, the various associations gave prominence to different aspects of the Syrian dictatorship, from the death penalty to breaches of human rights, but all underlined the contradiction between Assad’s statements denouncing terrorism and the flourishing terrorist training camps in Syria.
“After September 11 there is a genuine risk that dictatorships are legitimised in the name of the international alliance against terrorism, when in reality these regimes use the war on terrorism to clamp down on internal opposition,” Hands Off Cain Secretary Sergio D’Elia said.
Chiara Di Segni of the international League for Human Rights, said: “this is not a protest against the Italian institutions that receive President Assad, but an attempt to raise public awareness on the issues of human rights, the death penalty and Syria’s anti-semitism.”
Daniele Capezzone, secretary of the Italian Radicals, was less diplomatic.
”Our compliments to all the politicians who have received and honoured Bashar Assad: the mayor of Rome, a noted defender of human rights, President Ciampi, the governor of the Central Bank and the Italian Prime Minister.”
Green party senator Fiorello Cortiana, appealed “not to turn a blind eye to totalitarian regimes just because they are useful to West, seeing that the West has already paid its dues on September 11.”
Riccardo Pacifici, of the Roman Jewsih Community, condemned “Syria’s role in financing terrorism,” and reiterated that “there will be no peace in the Middle East before democracies that defend human rights are in power.”
Some Radical militants attempted to catch President Assad’s eye with their banners as he left the Campidoglio, but the police immediately converged on them and ripped up the posters reading “Freedom and Human Rights In Syria”.