Madam Chair, our government has made a significant number of statements concerning the violence in Syria from the very inception of that violence. In fact, we have been world leaders in speaking out against the Assad regime.
Beginning in March 21, 2011, the Minister of Foreign Affairs condemned the Assad regime and called for its resignation. We have made, to date, 15 condemnations of the Assad regime.
In terms of sanctions, in early May of 2011 the Prime Minister made a statement announcing targeted sanctions against members of the Assad regime. We followed that with eight escalating announcements about sanctions, each one greater than the last, in the hope that each one would cause the violence to cease and at the same time not hurt the people of Syria. Unfortunately, we have seen that these sanctions so far have not succeeded in ending the violence.
That just shows that we need to convince Russia, primarily, to move off its stand on Syria, and we need to support respect for human rights.
As the member will know, our government is creating the office of religious freedom. That would be very important to the people of this region. We must speak out in regard to the protection of all human rights, including religious freedom, and we hope we will see a new, democratically elected government that will make the protection of human rights and religious freedoms very important in that new government.