100,000 victims’ names read in global protest against UN inaction on Syria
Activists began reading the names of 100,000 people killed in Syria outside UN headquarters, in a modest launch of what they hope will be a global protest.
A dozen Syrian-Americans opposed to President Bashar al-Assad started the event in New York's Dag Hammarskjold Plaza.
The names of 100,000 of the more than 160,000 people killed during the three-year civil war were to be read during a 24-hour period in cities across North America, Europe and inside Syria.
Demonstrators held up a banner that read, "Over 160,000 dead in Syria. How many more? #100000Names", with US and Syrian opposition flags as the New York traffic rumbled past.
Sharp divisions between China and Russia, which have vetoed four resolutions on Syria, and Western powers have paralysed Security Council efforts to find a solution to the conflict.
Activists said they chose the location so the Security Council could "see the results of their inaction".
"It's very painful for us to know that we're going to wake up tomorrow and have Bashar al-Assad be president for another seven-year term," activist and writer Lina Sergie Attar said.
"The dead, the displaced, the raped, the maimed. All of these are the accomplishments of this man who wants to declare himself president yet once again and that's what we're protesting."
The names were being shared between, and read out by activists staging similar events in New York, London, Toronto, Chicago, Los Angeles, Berlin, Frankfurt, Paris and in Syria, she said.