The head of a U.N. investigative commission on Friday called commitments made by the new authorities in Syria to protect the rights of minorities “encouraging” but said attacks have continued on members of the Alawite sect in the months since a major outbreak of sectarian violence on Syria’s coast.
Paulo Pinheiro, the head of the U.N. Commission of Inquiry on Syria, told a meeting of the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva that the current Syrian government — led by Islamist former insurgents who ousted former Syrian President Bashar Assad — had given his team “unfettered access” to the coast and to witnesses of the violence and victims’ families.
