A group of Syrians living in Switzerland want Bern to get more involved in supporting the protest movement against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.
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Wajd Zimmermann of the Jasmine Collective told Swiss public radio on Wednesday that they had sent an open letter to this year’s president, Micheline Calmy-Rey – who is also Switzerland’s foreign minister – calling on her to support efforts to submit the Syrian case to the International Criminal Court.
“Switzerland, as a country which defends human rights, cannot remain silent,” she said.
The group also want the Swiss ambassador in Damascus to observe the protests, as his French and US counterparts have done.
The ambassador would be an “official international witness of the peacefulness of the demonstrators’ movement”, Zimmermann explained.
The US ambassador met a number of demonstrators in Hama last Friday, when he and his French colleague visited the city without permission.
The Damascus-based embassies of those two countries were subsequently attacked by supporters of the current government.
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