HRW slams Syria

Human Rights Watch on Saturday condemned Syria's "deliberate policy" of dispersing protesters with deadly force after activists said security forces killed at least 15 people in the latest protests. The deaths came on Friday as Damascus accused the US envoy to Syria of inciting violence in the city of Hama, where activists said nearly half a million people took part in a demonstration.
Washington roundly denied the charge and accused the Syrian embassy in Washington of spying on demonstrators in the United States. Opposition activists reported five deaths on Friday in the central city of Homs, two in the capital's commercial neighbourhood Medan, six in the Dmeir area, east of Damascus, and two in the Maaret al-Numan area of the north-west.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said security forces also arrested more than 200 people nation-wide on Friday, more than half of them in Homs. Rights groups say security forces have killed more than 1,300 civilians and arrested at least 12,000 since anti-government protests erupted in mid-March. New York-based Human Rights Watch issued a damning criticism of Syrian security forces for firing on unarmed civilians and for beating detainees, based on testimony from alleged defectors.
"All of the interviewed defectors told Human Rights Watch that their superiors had told them that they were fighting infiltrators (mundaseen), salafists (Muslim fundamentalist radicals) and terrorists," HRW said in a statement. "The defectors said they were surprised to encounter unarmed protesters instead, but still were ordered to fire on them in a number of instances. The defectors also reported that those who refused orders to shoot on protesters ran the risk of being shot themselves."
One defector spoke of an incident in Homs, where "protesters had sat down in the square." "We got an order... to shoot at the protesters. We were shooting for more than half an hour. There were dozens and dozens of people killed and wounded.