A UN Syria inquiry on Wednesday called on the international community to address Syria’s detainee and human rights crisis, which has persisted even after the downfall of Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorship, by pressing the new authorities to account for thousands still missing, ensure fair trials, and put an end to the violence that continues to undermine the country’s development.
The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic, which conducts independent investigations into gross violations of human rights law was represented by Monia Ammar and Fionnuala Ní Aoláin during their most recent visit to the country. They emphasized that detainee rights in the country showed minimal signs of improving, even under the current transitional government that ousted al-Assad and his affiliates.
The group of detainees can be divided into two main groups, the first being the enforced disappearances of civilians who spoke out against al-Assad during the civil war and the second group consists of innocent civilians targeted in reciprocal sweeps by competing armed groups to be used as leverage in forced prison exchanges. During al-Assad’s 24 year reign as President, a position that he had inherited from his father Hafez al-Assad, over 160,000 individuals were arbitrarily detained or forcibly disappeared by regime forces.
Most of these victims were kidnapped from their homes or streets after protesting in civil uprisings against him, and many have been massacred in the Saydnaya military prison and subjected to sexual violence. It has also become increasingly commonplace for rival factions to collaborate with authorities to gain hostage leverage, such as in Sweida, where armed guards captured government personnel, forcing the release of arbitrarily detained Druze prisoners from Adra Central Prison.
The inquiry also encouraged countries to repatriate their nationals from the Roj camp which currently detains thousands of foreign women and children with alleged links to the terrorist organization ISIS (the Islamic State). To date, none of the residents here have been formally charged, tried, or legally convicted of a crime, which runs contrary to international treaties such as Article 9 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Additionally, the disappearance of 800 fighters captured during fighting between the government faction and Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces have also raised concern.
Vigilante attacks on individuals who were alleged to have served the former government and the perpetration of hate crimes against minority groups such as the Alawites, who are an ethnoreligious sect showcase how a security vacuum allows political grievances to develop into ethnic cleansing.
As international recognition increases towards the large scale of atrocities committed during the Syrian Civil War, with cases all around the world of al-Assad war criminals sentenced like in Koblenz, Germany and Vienna, it is imperative that this momentum turns toward ensuring all detainees are protected by legal safeguards.