Carleton students gathered in the Unicentre atrium Nov. 7-8 to circulate a petition to kick out the Syrian ambassador to Canada.
The petition, which was part of the Syrian Awareness Campaign, was addressed to Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
Yaman Marwah, a law student at Carleton, said they didn’t see the ambassador as Syria’s representative, but as the “brutal regime representative”.
The Syrian ambassador could not be reached for comment.
Their main aim in getting the petition out was to raise awareness, Marwah said.
According to figures presented by the United Nations, over 4,000 innocent civilians have died due to recent events in Syria.
Marwah said the real numbers are much higher, as the UN criterion requires a physical body to count the person as dead.
The Syrian Awareness Campaign is run and organized wholly by Carleton students, according to Marwah. However, most of the volunteers don’t want to reveal their names because "they fear of what might happen to their family back in Syria," he said.
"Syria's government is known to be brutal worldwide" and many have already received threats regarding their families in Syria because of their political participation in Canada, he added.
In the petition’s first two hours, the student volunteers had gathered over 100 signatures, he said. The petition was signed by students and faculty of a broad range of nationalities, he added.
The campaign will take to the streets Nov. 19 with a march for Syria. The march has two aims: to have the Syrian National Council recognized as a legitimate government and to remove the current Syrian ambassador to Canada, Marwah said.