June 27, 2012 - In this video, Ahed Al Hendi speaks before the Human Rights Council in in Geneva Switzerland. Al Hendi describes how in 2007 he attempted to establish a secular human rights group at his university in Damascus. He was subsequently arrested by Assad’s security forces and tortured for 40 days. Now in exile, he has redoubled his efforts to shed light on the repression that ordinary Syrians endure. The Syrian government, he pointed out to the Human Rights Council, “massacres its own people in broad daylight.”

The UN, founded to protect basic human rights and prevent genocide, has a responsibility to isolate the Assad regime, the activist maintains. To begin, the organization can strip the Assad regime of its seat on UNESCO’s human rights committee. Al Hendi warned that in the face of continuing slaughter, “words are no longer enough.”

Al Hendi is a former Syrian political prisoner and is currently the Arab Program Manager at CyberDissidents.org, a division of Advancing Human Rights. He is a leading critic of the Assad regime and supports a democratic Syria.