British anti-war campaigners to protest against Syria attack

Thousands of British anti-war campaigners are to demonstrate against the Western war rhetoric against Syria.

The demonstration titled “No attack on Syria” was called by The Stop the War Coalition and Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and is planned to be held on Saturday 31 August in central London.

The protesters will gather at Temple Place and march to Parliament and Downing Street in order to voice their opposition to military intervention against the Syrian government over the alleged use of chemical weapons near Damascus.

Referring to the Iraq war, Stop the War’s convenor Lindsey German said, “People were lied to in 2003 and there is a very strong feeling that they are being lied to again.”

“We have had three major interventions in the shape of Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, and none of them has brought meaningful peace or upheld human rights. We must not go to war against Syria,” she stressed.

Earlier on Thursday, British Prime Minister David Cameron’s plans to launch an offensive against the Syrian government were defeated in the Commons vote. American officials, however, said the US government is ready for unilateral military action without the UK’s support.

On August 21, the insurgent in Syria claimed that 1,300 people had been killed in a government chemical attack on militant strongholds in Damascus suburbs.

The Syrian government, however, categorically rejected the baseless claim, and announced that the chemical attack had been carried out by the militants themselves as a false flag operation.