(July 18, 2014) – Scores of civil society activists, human rights defenders, media and humanitarian workers remain in arbitrary detention in Syria more than a month after the government declared a general amnesty, twelve nongovernmental organizations said today. Syrian officials should immediately release all activists arbitrarily held for their legitimate activities and allow independent international monitors inside Syria’s detention facilities to monitor the releases and conditions of confinement.
Legislative
Decree no. 22, enacted on June 9, 2014, declares an amnesty for many of the
charges peaceful activists are facing, including “weakening national
sentiment,” as well as some offenses under the Anti-Terrorism Law that are
being used to muzzle dissent. But many peaceful activists who should have
benefitted from the amnesty remain in detention, the organizations said. Other
individuals who are arbitrarily detained as a result of their human
rights-related activities, including some of those facing charges in military
field courts, like freedom of
expression advocate Bassil Khartabil, have been excluded from the amnesty. Some
advocates, like the lawyers and human rights defenders Khalil Maatouk and Abdulhadi Cheikh
Awad, whom former detainees report to have seen in government detention,
continue to be held in conditions
amounting to enforced disappearance with their relatives having no information
about their fate or whereabouts. Of a group of 34 peaceful activists whose
cases the organizations have been monitoring, only one, Yara
Faris, was released under the
June 9 amnesty.
“President
Assad’s amnesty raised the hopes of many detainees and their families, only to
dash them again as weeks passed by without any movement,” a spokesperson from
the organizations said. “Every day behind bars for peaceful activists, who
should never have been jailed in the first place, is another day of injustice
for them and their families.”
Family members,
detainees, and lawyers complained about the lack of transparency about the
implementation of the amnesty, such as providing information about who would be
released.
SANA,
the government news agency, released several statements about the numbers of
people released in the amnesty, totaling 2,445.
A lawyer working with
political detainees in Damascus who is monitoring the implementation of the
amnesty to identify which individuals have been released told the organizations
that the confirmed number of releases has not exceeded 1,300 individuals
including regular criminal detainees. The lawyer said that those released
included about 400 individuals that were before the Anti-Terrorism court, 200
from Sednaya prison, 200 from the security branches, and 150 others from other
governorate prisons. He stated that judges sent the files of some detainees who
ought to be released under the amnesty back to the public prosecutor to change
the charges to ones that would fall outside the scope of the general amnesty.
Other local activists also told the organizations that the amnesty occurred
weeks after an intensified campaign of arbitrary arrest, and that some of the persons arrested were
subsequently released on the basis of the amnesty decree.
The Syrian Network for
Human Rights (SNHR), another local monitoring group reported
on July 10 that it had compiled information about 632 civilian detainees
released since June 10 under the amnesty, including 384 held on criminal
charges that are apparently not related to the conflict. The 248 others were
human rights activists, lawyers, and doctors, 200 of whom were released by the
Anti-Terrorism court. The group said that 25 defectors accused of disobeying
military orders or not completing their compulsory military service were also
released.
The Anti-Terrorism
court, established in July 2012 to
implement the Anti-Terrorism Law, has tried and sentenced many human rights
defenders and other peaceful activists. The charges are brought
under the guise of countering violent militancy, but frequently the allegations
against the activists actually amount to such acts as distributing humanitarian
aid, participating in protests, and documenting human rights abuses.
On July 21, the Anti-Terrorism
court will resume the trial of Mazen Darwish and four of his colleagues
from the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression on accusations of
“publicizing terrorist acts,” a charge that is included in the legislative
decree.
Darwish
is on trial along with Hussein Gharir, Hani Zaitani, Mansour Omari and
Abdel Rahman Hamada. Omari and Hamada were conditionally released on
February 6, 2013 pending trial, but the other three men remain in detention.
The
indictment states that the charges against them were brought for their activities
as staff members of the organization. The activities included monitoring online
news by the Syrian opposition, publishing studies on the human rights and media
situation in Syria, and documenting names of the detained, disappeared, wanted
and killed within the context of the Syrian conflict. The indictment further
states that an investigative judge in Damascus considered these actions part of
an attempt to “stir the internal situation in Syria and so provoke
international organizations to condemn Syria in international forums.”
The activists who remain
arbitrarily held despite the June 9 amnesty include 33 of the 34 detainees held
by the government as of June 9 featured in the Free Syria’s Silenced Voices campaign, carried out by a coalition
of independent groups on behalf of activists, and humanitarian and media
workers arbitrarily detained by the government.
While it
is impossible to verify the number of people in detention in Syria, the Violations Documentation Center,
another local monitoring group, reports that 40,853 people detained since the
start of the uprising in March 2011 are still being held.
Although President Bashar
al-Assad has issued at least seven previous amnesty decrees since the uprising
began in 2011, security forces have kept many peaceful activists in detention.
For the first time, however, the June 2014 amnesty included those who have been
charged with or convicted of freedom of expression-related offenses under the Anti-Terrorism Law enacted in 2012 (article 8 of the
Anti-Terrorism Law).
“If President al-Assad is serious about his amnesty, he should open the
doors of all his prisons to independent monitors to check who is actually being
held and why,” the spokesperson said.
“Otherwise, this general amnesty will end up being yet another false promise,
with released detainees soon replaced by other peaceful activists locked up. It
should not take an amnesty to end the arbitrary detention of individuals
imprisoned solely for peaceful political activism, human rights, humanitarian
and media work.”
The twelve nongovernmental organizations are:
Amnesty International
Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network
FIDH in the framework of the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders
Front Line Defenders
Gulf Center for Human Rights
Humanist Institute for Co-operation with Developing Countries
Human Rights Watch
World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT) in the framework of the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders
Reporters Without
Borders
Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression
Syrian Network for Human Rights
Violations Documentation Center
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